by Ana Montano

Created on: April 08, 2008

In our overmedicated society, it is the easy to choose to medicate when you have any sort problem. There are pills for everything and while medicinal advancements are beneficial, medicine is usually overused in matters that could be resolved in other ways.

Mental health is one of these areas that is relatively new and where medicine has started to take hold. There are medications for anxiety, depression, psychosis, ADD, etc. The list goes on and on. Many of these medications are the same and were found to treat different things. And sometimes the side effects of these medications can be worse than the condition they are treating.

But mental health is unique in that medication is a short term solution to a more serious problem. Depression is one of the mental health issues that usually has more deep roots and if you can't figure out why you're depressed, you would have to be on anti-depressants for the rest of your life to be able to maintain yourself balanced.

Depression is often cyclical and bouts of depression come and go, but if you figure out how to handle your emotions to avoid depression altogether, medication isn't doing you any good. In fact, in the long run, anti-depressants can become a bigger problem. One can easily become addicted to anti-depressants and create a dependence on them. You could end up having withdrawal symptoms when you get off medication, which can make your depression worse.

These are all the reasons why medication should not always be the answer for depression. Depression is a unique condition and it should be treated by teaching people coping mechanisms and getting to the root of the problem. Anti-depressants are a quick fix to a much more deep seated issue. Avoiding the bigger issue can result in a life of depression and dependence on the medicine.

Our society doesn't need more medications. We have to learn as a country and as a culture that pills are not the answer to everything. If not, we will soon be an entire peoples who have serious mental problems and are constantly drugged up. There are better, more constructive ways to deal with our problems.

Therapy, self reflection and a change in thinking are better ways to deal with mental health problems like depression. And if correctly used and maintained, these methods can make anti-depressants completely obsolete. All anti-depressants do is create an artificial state that you could really achieve with alternate methods of treatment.

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