Reply #20: There is a place for psychiatric drugs, but IMO the problem stems

[RaleighNCDUer]

from the common western medicine practice of treating symptoms instead of diseases. Most times, any mental illness is a symptom of something else that is profoundly wrong, whether it is environmental contaminants, other physical disease or whatever.

I am currently depressed. I'm not sure of the cause, but I think that chronic back pain has a lot to do with it, with the back pain preventing me from getting the exercise I need to trigger natural anti=depressant brain chemistry. I don't take medications for it - I did at one time, but they literally made me nuts in that I didn't know WHY I was thinking what I was thinking. I would be feeling 'normal' and out of the blue get suicidal ideation and not know it was wrong because I didn't remember I was depressed. Without medication I may be depressed, but I'm in control and I can remind myself that I'm depressed.

Incidentally, when I was first diagnosed with depression the psychiatrist gave me meds for two symptoms - Xanax for the depression and sleeping pills for the insomnia.
WTF? Somebody is depressed with suicidal ideation and you give him a bottle of sleeping pills?