In the treatment of affective disorders such as depression and anxiety or somatization disorders, doctors often recommend that patients take medication, and of course patients need to take medication at this time. However, due to layman’s lack of understanding, visitors are often reluctant to take such psycho-affective medications. They may be very concerned about the side effects of the medication, the damage it will do to their bodies, and their dependence on it. They may carefully read the drug’s instructions to find out even the one in 10,000 chance of side effects and then sincerely believe that they are the lucky one in 10,000. Then family and friends start pushing, they say throw that crap in the trash, it’s only making you worse, eat well than anything else. At this time, they themselves can always find examples in the most inconspicuous corners of newspapers or websites of patients who have suffered more due to doctors’ misuse of medication, thus reasserting the dualistic view of mind-body separation, believing that emotional problems cannot cause physical discomfort, or that the heart should be cured of heart disease, and eventually giving up taking medication, making all their previous efforts go down the drain.
Here, I assure you that such drugs are absolutely safe when taken under the guidance of a doctor, they do not cause a single bit of damage to the human body, nor do they have addictive properties. To better illustrate this point, I will briefly explain the neurological mechanisms of depression, anxiety and other mood disorders, as well as somatization disorders, and briefly describe how the drugs work.
The human nervous system has a conscious animal nervous system and a non-conscious vegetative nervous system. The vegetative nerves are further divided into sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves, and the autonomic nerves control the visceral activity of the whole body. Our nerves need some mediators in transmitting signals, and these mediators we call neurotransmitters. The main neurotransmitters involved in mood regulation include pentraxin (5HT), norepinephrine (NE), and dopamine (DA), among others. Among them, 5HT is related to appetite, libido and aggression; NE is related to attention, aggressiveness and interest; DA is related to pleasure and reward. The three transmitters simultaneously regulate mood, cognitive function, and somatic pain perception. If a person is under high stress for a long time, causing a large accumulation of negative emotions over time, then our body will rapidly deplete these neurotransmitters. The lack of neurotransmitters then causes a disruption of neurotransmitter endocrine secretion, causing an overreaction of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA axis), and the body begins to release a large amount of stress hormones at this time, which causes inhibition or hyperactivity of internal organs, resulting in a series of emotional and somatic symptoms.
These symptoms may include
Depression: low mood, depression, depression, distress, frustration, sadness, pessimism, decreased pleasant experiences, decreased interest, frustration, heavy feelings of stress, low self-esteem, self-doubt, hesitation, regret, recurrent thoughts.
Anxiety: upset, fidgeting, worry, apprehension, fear, dread.
Emotional irritability: poor patience, easy to get anxious, anger, irritability, anger outbursts, temper tantrums.
Chronic fatigue syndrome: feeling of fatigue, weakness, loss of energy.
Neurological: dizziness, headache, tinnitus, poor memory, poor concentration.
Sleep disorders: sleep deprivation, difficulty in falling asleep, dreamy sleep, early awakening.
Chronic pain: tension headache, neck and back tension and stiffness pain, low back pain, muscle aches and pains.
Gastrointestinal system: such as flatulence, postprandial discomfort, acid reflux, belching, nausea, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea.
Cardiovascular system: heartburn, chest tightness, shortness of breath, breath-holding sensation, precordial discomfort, chest pain.
Genitourinary system: urinary frequency, urinary urgency, urinary pain, lumbago, loss of libido, menstrual disorders.
Phytodysfunction: chills, fever, sweating, trembling, dry mouth, foreign body sensation in the throat.
Metabolic disorder syndrome: blood sugar, lipids, uric acid, blood pressure.
However, no matter how severe these symptoms are, they are all dysfunctions due to emotional problems and are not part of any organic disease. And the more systemic and systemic these symptoms are, the more they indicate that this is due to a neurological disorder rather than an organic disease causing various discomforts.
So, how do antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications help?
Since the 1980s, the emergence of a new generation of antidepressant drugs, represented by Prozac, has opened a new chapter in the treatment of mental disorders. Compared with the previous drugs, the new generation of antidepressants are known for their significant effects and fewer adverse effects. They aim to reduce emotional and physical symptoms by increasing the concentration of neurotransmitters in the body. In fact, antidepressants replenish our bodies with the very substances that are depleted in large amounts due to stress or stress. This substance is naturally contained in our body itself, so in this sense, antidepressants can be seen simply as a supplement.
So unlike what people normally think, antidepressants do not harm our brain. On the contrary, if a person is in a state of chronic neurotransmitter deficiency, he or she will experience cognitive decline, poor memory, forgetfulness, and poor energy. This is due to the shrinkage of the hippocampus in the brain caused by long-term depression and anxiety. With the use of antidepressants, the neurotransmitters are gradually regulated to normal levels, which prevents neurological damage and promotes the recovery of neurons. This wrong impression that people used to use psycho-emotional drugs will damage the brain, eat more people will become stupid, is not only incorrect, but the opposite is true, long-term depression and anxiety in people, not to use antidepressants will hurt the brain.
Another popular view is that Western drugs can damage the body, especially the liver and kidneys. This view is not an empty one, and it is true that some western drugs can cause damage to liver and kidney function. But we can’t beat all western drugs to death just because they come from the West. Science has made our lives change day by day, and we have no reason not to believe in the scientific method. In clinical practice abroad for many years, antidepressants have been used in large numbers in patients with advanced cancer, renal failure, cirrhosis, diabetes, and many other organic diseases. Have these patients become worse as a result of the harmful effects of antidepressants? In fact, clinicians have found that rather than harming the patient’s body and liver and kidneys, patients taking antidepressants suffer less pain and recover better than those not taking antidepressants. And antidepressants even convert chemotherapy-insensitive cancer cells in cancer into chemotherapy-sensitive cancer cells, thus helping the cancer treatment in a substantial way. How did all this happen, if you ask? The reason is actually very simple. As the saying goes, if you are in a good mood, you will get well faster.
Foreign research shows that depression and cancer, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, rheumatic immune diseases, have a very high co-morbidity ratio, the cause of these physical and mental diseases itself is that people are in a long-term state of depression and anxiety, resulting in the body has been in a state of stress, continuous disruption of the neuroendocrine system, interference with the body’s normal hormone secretion, which leads to abnormal activities of the internal organs of the human body, with With the slow accumulation of time, various organic diseases come to us. When the body’s neuroendocrine system gradually returns to normal due to the adjustment of drugs, the body’s own immunity will be enhanced and it will have better resistance and recovery ability to various diseases. If the human body is compared to a car, then in a state of stress, we want to be a car running at high speed, if long-term consumption, the car will break down in a very short time. The role of antidepressants is to make this high-speed car to stop, rest for a while, repair, only then, this car will be more durable, more healthy.
The third popular view is that the heart needs medicine for the heart’s illness and that help through medication is an act of cowardice and does not solve the problem at all. I would say it is correct to a certain extent about this statement, and it is correct in that drugs really do not solve the problem at all, but are only a temporary means to deal with the problem as quickly as possible. The reason why people fall into a state of depression and anxiety is inseparable from their personality personality cognitive thinking patterns. When we encounter problems and frustrations, what kind of response do we take, what kind of attitude do we have towards them, how do we view ourselves and the problems in our lives internally? It is the incongruity of these aspects that leads us to depression and anxiety. Therefore, the long-term fundamental solution to depression and anxiety, and the way to face life more effectively, is to achieve inner growth through psychotherapy. If we want to rely on medication alone, we can easily relapse after stopping the medication, and very often even taking medication does not solve all the problems. But does this mean that we don’t need to take medication? Imagine a person who has fallen into the water, the way to save him is not to teach him how to swim on the spot, but to get him to shore first, even though the only way to make him avoid falling into the water again is to teach him to swim, but in emergency situations the means of dealing with the emergency period must be used. A person in a state of depression and anxiety, like the man who fell into the water, is suffering physically, his body functions are violated in all aspects, and in this painful state, he has no mind to think calmly about himself. In order to avoid physical damage and for psychotherapy to be more effective, the temporary use of drugs is a very necessary tool. In clinical studies, it has also been found that clients who use medication in combination with psychotherapy have better results than those who use one method of treatment alone.
In fact, the reason I recommend medication as a necessary treatment is not that I want people to rely on it. It is unrealistic to try to solve all problems by using drugs alone. Only psychotherapy is the fundamental way to solve the problem. I just hope that our clients can get out of their difficulties as soon as possible, and make more effective use of the benefits of medication to eliminate unnecessary fears in their minds, so that they can regain their former good physical and mental health.