We all know that psychiatry is fraught with numerous stigmas, and medications are no exception. There are perhaps more stigmas on psychiatric drugs than on drugs from any other area of medicine. We are going to talk about some of them, and the reality as it is.
The first, classic myth is that psychiatric medicine is for the "crazy."
This is an old paradigm, that the psychiatrist is for the "crazy." With greater access to education, fortunately this has changed, and already a greater volume of people know that psychiatrists see people with depression, anxiety, relationship problems, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance addictions, among other problems. Therefore, medicines are also designed to treat all of these things.
The next most common thing is that people believe that psychiatric medicine creates dependency.
They tell us all the time "that makes you addicted", and things like that. It is true that there are some medications that, poorly administered, generate dependence, this is much less than some other medicines, such as those used for pain. Furthermore, compared to all the medicine used in psychiatry, those with this potential are not even 10%.
Another classic myth is that once you start psychiatric medication, you cannot stop it, because it is for life, and the body gets used to it. This is not true of most problems. Sure, there are some serious diseases in which we have to, but compared to the rest of medicine, the cases where it is necessary to administer the medicine for the whole life are minimal (it only compares with patients, hypertensive, diabetic, with arthritis, high cholesterol, etc.). Treatments are generally limited over time, and there are many other interventions to alleviate symptoms that help keep a person from having to take medications for life.
And the fourth most important myth (although there are many more), is that psychiatric medicine is very "strong". People are scared, terrified. Some do not know how to define what they mean by "strong", but generally they mean that it causes damage to the body. Some claim that they damage the brain, which is absurd, since a medicine designed to treat and relieve symptoms of an organ, how can it also damage it? Instead, psychiatric medicine strengthens the brain.
And a lot of misinformation circulates on the Internet about it, such as that some medicines cause Alzheimer's disease, and the like (as illogical as that vaccines cause autism). It is true that all medicines have side effects, but psychiatric medicine is the safest, compared to common medicines like pain medicine, antibiotics or others.
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Guillermo Mendoza Vélez www.SaludMentalyEmocional.com
