When I first meet a client I always want to know if they are on any medication or seeing a doctor for their presenting issue. This is especially important for more serious mental health issues and for any physical issues that may be related to how they feel. For certain problems long term medication may well be the best answer and as far as I am concerned that is to be left to my client and their doctor. But even then some form of talking therapy is likely to be of benefit in many cases alongside any drugs.
However in a lot of cases taking drugs long term is never going to solve the underlying issues of why a person has feelings or behavior patterns that they would rather be without. I subscribe to regular newsletters from Dr Mercola in America and they always make very interesting and entertaining reading. This article from Dr Mercola talks about how he feels that there is an over medicating in America of people suffering from depression and also has a lot of questions concerning statistics and information we are given about certain medications. Since we are often never far behind America this article is well worth a read.
Although there seems still to be a prevalent view that depression is something that one perhaps just has to live with or at best may take years to overcome in my experience that is not always the case and I have first hand experience, as have many of my colleagues, of being able to help clients make significant changes in their emotional well being in as little as just a few sessions.
Also as an update to the above this is a recent article on the BBC (health) website by Dr Joanna Moncrieff where she talks about how putting patients on medication for psychological issues can be just a case of putting them into a “drug induced state” without ever addressing the real issues behind the problem just as Dr Mercola’s article does.