Are psychiatric medications bad for you?
Psychiatric medications are good for people who take them to correct illnesses involving the nervous system. If there are side effects, they are often minor and short-lived. The fear that psychiatric medication can potentially cause long-term damage is for the most part an old Wive’s tale that ceased to be relevant after the 1970s. So at this point it’s about 50 years out of date. It’s about as relevant is diving into your school desk to avoid the effects of radiation with the nuclear bomb. Pretty silly then and now. If there are side effects with the psychiatric medication, and the dose is reduced, or the medication is stopped–then the side effects often go away with hours. At worst, the side effects are insomnia, irritability, or sexual side effects. Sometimes there is weight gain. Once a medicine dose is reduced or the medicine is stopped, the side effects often go away in hours.
There are some exceptions. Atypical antipsychotics rarely cause involuntary muscle tics. These can sometimes persist even after the medication is stopped, and rarely this can sometimes be permanent.
Prior to the 1990s, When there were much fewer medications to choose from, psychiatrists often had to prescribe medicines that had greater potential side effects. These are old medicines, such as Haldol and Mellaril. I haven’t started one of those medications for almost 20 years. In general, These medicines are rarely prescribed now. Why is that? Because there are many more modern alternatives that solve the same problems as the old medicines solved, but with a much lower side effect risk. Like the old adage says, better living through better technology. Old medications could cause muscle twitches. Once the old medication was stopped, in rare cases the twitches could persist, sometimes becoming permanent. The last time I saw anything like that happened was about 25 years ago. there are more modern medications to deal with problems so prescribers and patients don’t have to deal with the potential side effects of older, typical antipsychotic medications.
These older medicines include lithium. That can injure the thyroid or kidneys with long-term use. That requires blood tests to be taken and once a small problem is discovered on the blood test, then the lithium is phased off. In some cases the damage to the kidneys can persist.
These newer medications, like Olanzapine, Risperdal, and Caplyta, usually have no side effects at all. Some can cause minor weight gain, which goes away once the medicine stops. The we
These medications are used to calm down extreme disturbances in the nervous system. There might be bipolar mood swings, or depression that isn’t responding to the usual anti-depressants. A person might have hallucinations or delusions. With these extreme issues, a person’s ability to function is often compromised. If these issues can’t be put under control, some people have to withdraw from high school or college. Others find they lose their jobs or relationships. So a lot is on the line. It’s not like a person can just not take the medicine and everything will be fine.
And so the benefits and risks of taking the medicine need to be weighed with the benefits and risks of not taking the medicine.
When a doctor prescribes the medicine, he goes over the risks and benefits of taking one medicine, and compares that with the risks and benefits of a second medication, and these are compared with the risks and benefits of not taking a medicine at all.
Not taking a psychiatric medication can have grave consequences. One patient who worked with me, who is actually a physician, admitted that for years, he just worked three hours a day because the depression was so bad. It was hard to sleep he had high anxiety, and it was difficult to focus. Brain imaging studies, show that with depression this severe, causes the brain’s memory center to shrink 10%. Also the brain’s fear center is overly active, and the brain’s attention center, the nucleus, accumbens, is underactive. So there is a physical reason for him to have felt those symptoms.
But leaving this chemical imbalance going has its consequences. Now at 70 years of age, he couldn’t work anymore. In fact, his memory was so poor that he needed to go into assisted living. He had the beginnings of dementia. Untreated depression is one of the risk factors for getting dementia. So is letting sleep apnea go untreated. That is a condition where the brain is deprived of oxygen many times, sometimes hundreds of times per night, for minutes or dozens of minutes, through the night. Other organs starved for oxygen can also suffer, like the kidneys, which are organs with some of the highest metabolism rates in the body. And so when I asked him if he had kidney disease, he said no, because he had the beginnings of dementia, but when I looked at his blood lab studies, his kidney function tests showed chronic kidney disease–all preventable.
And no, he didn’t form a consistent relationship with a psychiatrist to deal with his behavioral health issues. It was too embarrassing for him. Such is the high cost of holding onto self-limiting beliefs (it is crazy to ask for help with the nervous system) and acting on them rather than questioning them.
So it’s important to take care of yourself. If any part of your body is giving you pain, that’s your body‘s way of asking for help. When it involves your mind, that’s your brain talking. Listen to it. Your brain deserves as much help, when it needs it, as any other part of your body. Don’t treat the brain as a second-class citizen in your body. If you would go to a doctor for help with a painful sinus infection, and take medication for that, then you should give your brain the same common courtesy. No double standard!
With two million times more nerve-to-nerve connections than all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, the brain has tremendous information processing potential. I go over these and many other amazing brain facts in my book, “Prescription for Positivity.” It’s available on Amazon. Use your mind to take care of your mind.. Ignore people who ignore the facts.