Antidepressants: The Enemy of Self Awareness
In order to be fully self aware one must be able to feel his or her emotions fully. By camouflaging your emotions with the use of antidepressants you are in effect preventing yourself from being fully in touch with your environment and how your life is truly affecting your emotions. Antidepressants are truly the enemy of self awareness.
In recent years family doctors have been taught by the pharmaceutical companies and their representatives that prescribing antidepressant medications is the ‘first line’ treatment for many ailments ranging from simple agitation and anxiety to situational as well as long term depression. Unfortunately, this advice is contrary to the evidence of what is at the root of the problem. By not fully educating and informing their patients that the way to truly cure their emotions is to understand why they are occurring and instead misleading patients into ‘popping a pill’, they are actually doing a great disservice to their patients that can have tragic results.
All depression and anxiety is situational. Most doctors do not understand nor want to believe this because they do not have a correct understanding of the human emotional system. Recent or immediate events that upset or cause anxiety is termed ‘situational’ depression. An example of this might be a death in the family or perhaps a bad relationship or job situation that you are currently going through.
This kind of depression is best treated by working with a very good Phd Psychologist to identify the root of the problem and learn healthy coping strategies to help deal with the situation. This might consist of cognitive behavioral therapy or perhaps something as simple as going to the gym regularly or ‘reframing’ the way you look at something in your mind. Of course tackling the actual bad situation and making changes to fix it is also of absolute importance so that it does not last so long as to turn into a more ‘chronic’ depression.
Long term or ‘chronic’ depression is also caused by external events and your reaction to them. The difference is that this is caused by more fundamental, longer term ‘big picture’ issues. For example, you might have been brought up in a family without a father or mother or perhaps in a family with behavioral dysfunctions for many years or perhaps you have been stuck in a bad work situation for a long time. The frustration and anger of this can lead to low self esteem and a deep-seated ‘chronic’ depression that builds up over many years. This kind of depression is also treatable with therapy and life changes but will take longer to fix because usually it also involves behavioral changes that will take some time to master. Often this means forming new habits which will then benefit you for the rest of your life.
In both of these types of depression and anxiety using antidepressants will only hinder healing the problem. By ‘masking’ the symptoms…the sadness or hopelessness or frustration…the patient loses his incentive to focus on the true root cause of the problem and do what is necessary to fix it. Patients then become dependent on the medication and are tricked into thinking that just taking a pill every day is actually curing the problem when in fact it is not doing anything of the sort. All it is doing is lining the pockets of the drug companies. Becoming self aware of your life and how your mind and emotions are inextricably intertwined with it can you truly ‘cure’ your depressive or anxiety illness. For more great articles and insight please visit www.SelfAwareness101.com
With Degrees in Film, Real Estate Finance and Development as well as Psychology, Robert Levin writes expert articles covering a broad range of issues. Some of his websites include: www.toptenmba.com, Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/mental-health-articles/antidepressants-the-enemy-of-self-awareness-873562.html
www.MBAonline.me, www.lawdegree.me, www.selfawareness101.com and www.tvwriter.me