Since I have been practicing as a clinical psychiatrist, I have been asked two questions by patients and their families: one is at the beginning of treatment, “Doctor, what are the side effects of this medicine?” The other is when the patient’s condition improves with medication, the question is “When can I stop taking the medication?” Today, I would like to organize my thoughts and try to answer these two common questions. However, this is not a standard answer. Almost every patient will ask their psychiatrist, “Doctor, what are the side effects of this medication on me?” The questioner may be either the patient himself or a relative of the patient. When I am confronted with this question, I tend to look at the questioner with disbelief and ask rhetorically, “Why don’t you ask me if this medication is effective for your condition?” The patient or the patient’s family will often say, “We’re worried about the side effects of the medication, so we asked.” I would then say, “Aren’t you worried that the medication I chose won’t cure you?” I would then point out that their questioning reflects their habitual negative cognitive patterns: in the face of events, more focus on negative outcomes, more anxiety, more pessimistic tendencies; and in the focus on the future, but also pessimistic expectations more than optimistic expectations. This may be the psychological factors that make these patients susceptible to mental illness. According to the principle of pharmacology, any kind of drug used for clinical treatment of disease in the therapeutic dose, there will be two aspects of the role, one is the therapeutic effect on the disease or symptoms of the disease, and the second is not related to the therapeutic effect of the other effects, also known as side effects (side effects). However, many people without medical education tend to equate side effects with “adverse reactions”. In fact, for most medications, the most common side effects are minor, short-lived biological effects caused by the medication that do not cause substantial damage to the human body. The real concern of doctors and patients should be “adverse drug reactions”. According to the regulations of WHO International Drug Monitoring Cooperative Center, adverse drug reactions (ADR) refers to the harmful and unrelated to the purpose of medication that occurs when normal doses of drugs are used for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment of diseases or regulation of physiological functions. This definition excludes reactions caused by intentional or accidental overdose and improper use of drugs. In clinical practice, the adverse drug reactions that have the greatest impact on the human body or may have relatively serious consequences are often allergic reactions caused by hypersensitivity to the drug itself or to its cofactor components. This is because other adverse drug reactions that have serious and substantial damage to the human body are basically already known at the drug screening stage, which becomes the basis for the drug not being able to enter the subsequent clinical therapeutic trials, i.e., it is no longer possible for these drugs to become therapeutic drugs that enter the clinic. The drugs that enter clinical application have already undergone standardized and relatively long time clinical application, basically excluding common and relatively rare adverse drug reactions. The only allergic reaction is related to individual sensitivity, which may be difficult to detect at the drug screening stage or even at the stage of entering clinical application. Thus, allergic reactions are actually a small probability event, much like the countless chances of being hit by a space object in the history of the Earth, but the very few impacts that actually form huge craters are small probability events. Similarly, the number of people who buy lottery tickets, but the number of people who actually win the jackpot is few and far between, is also a small probability event. Thus, the chances of having an allergic reaction after taking a medication are equivalent to buying a lottery ticket and winning the jackpot, extremely rare. It is only that sometimes such adverse reactions lead to pain and loss that the patient should not have to suffer that people take the reactions to such adverse reactions more seriously. Although adverse drug reactions are part of the side effects, it is precisely because those rare allergic reactions lead to more serious consequences that people are more vigilant about adverse drug reactions. In reality, however, adverse drug reactions are such a small percentage of a drug’s side effects that they can be completely ignored for the patient. There are at least two reasons for me to say so: firstly, doctors must have sufficient knowledge of the drugs they prescribe, especially their adverse reactions, and they must have sufficient knowledge and understanding of them, and they must have assessed the corresponding risks. It must have occurred to the doctor that if he prescribes the drug to a patient who should not be taking it due to his negligence, resulting in any consequences, he will at least be held civilly liable. Once the patient has filed a lawsuit for this reason, regardless of whether the lawsuit ultimately finds the doctor negligent or not, the doctor will probably end up with a ruined reputation as a result. Therefore, a doctor must be cautious not only because his professionalism requires that he must not make such a mistake, but also because he may face a civil or even criminal lawsuit that will ruin his reputation. Secondly, as the producers of drugs, the pharmaceutical companies, after producing a drug, will surely be cautious about any kind of adverse reaction that may lead to compensation. This is because once a drug company neglects an adverse drug reaction that may lead to serious consequences, it may face litigation for astronomical claims and may even go bankrupt as a result. No drug company would neglect such a risk when manufacturing, marketing and promoting a drug. It is for the above reasons that I myself will always think twice when prescribing drugs to my patients, firstly for effectiveness and secondly for safety. Even when I myself, as a patient, visit other doctors, I do so with the conviction that I am not worried about adverse drug reactions. In the end, all I tell my patients is this: take your medication with confidence, I make my choices carefully, and I take responsibility for them. How I use the medication is my business, whether you follow the doctor’s instructions is your business. It is only when I use the right medication and you follow the doctor’s instructions that the combined efforts of these two parties can truly benefit you and cure your disease. For those patients whose condition improves after medication, I tend to analyze the problem in a more systematic way and answer the patient’s question on the basis of the question, “When can I stop taking the medication? According to the principles of biomedicine, medication is certainly effective in treating mental illness. However, medication is only one of the means of curing mental illness, and it is often the basic treatment. There are many factors that affect the healing of mental illness, and medication is only one of them. In addition to the scientificity, rationality and applicability of the medication prescribed by the doctor, the patient’s adherence to the medication is also one of the determining factors of whether the medication is effective. Moreover, mental illnesses are closely related to psychosocial factors, and it is unrealistic to expect a single drug treatment to solve all the problems of mental illnesses. There are many other factors that may have an impact on the effectiveness of mental illness treatment, some of which play an even greater role than medication. For example, the role of the patient’s pre-morbid personality traits, positive and cheerful versus passive and introverted, in the recovery process should not be underestimated. Family members’ attitude towards the patient after the disease, environmental atmosphere, etc., also have an important influence on the regression of the disease: family members’ excessive concern and overprotection of the patient after the disease will often weaken the patient’s will to pursue the recovery of the disease, and sincere and appropriate encouragement and support from family members will have a positive effect on the patient’s victory over the disease. The level of social functioning of the patient before the disease also affects the efficacy of mental illness treatment, such as poor social functioning before the disease, the symptoms of the disease have been controlled after the return of the community there are obvious obstacles, such patients need more durable and more effective drug treatment, in order to maximize the avoidance of the patient’s condition reversal or recurrence. In addition, the age of onset of mental illness is also an important factor, i.e., the younger the age of onset, the lower the level of psychological development, the greater the lagging effect of psychological development caused by isolation from normal peers after the onset of the disease, and the greater the difficulty of recovery from the disease. Other factors such as the number and severity of co-morbidities (the existence of other physical or mental disorders along with a mental disorder) and the rationality or otherwise of rehabilitation treatment also play an important role in the treatment process and efficacy of mental illnesses. Therefore, I would tell a patient who asks the question, “When can I stop taking my medication? Because I only have half of the many influences on the effectiveness of medication, and the other half, adherence, is in your hands, is it not a bit unrealistic for me to make a judgment about when to discontinue medication in the midst of such a complex array of influences?”. . After I made such an explanation to my patients, most of them were able to rationally accept my explanation and expressed their willingness to actively cooperate with various treatment and rehabilitation measures in pursuit of a cured outcome. I hope that my answers and explanations to the two most frequently asked questions by psychiatric patients will help more patients to cooperate with their doctors more rationally and positively, and to strive for early recovery and become members of society with completely normal mental activities.