The doctor gave me the wrong drugs to treat my OCD and this is what happened….

Do we really need medicine to treat mental illness?

“I think he talks to someone in his head, who asks him to hurt himself”

“Hasn’t he visited a psychiatrist?”, I ask

“He has but they aren't helping…..I think he’s on the wrong medication”

The first time I came across a mental health issue was in college. Sadly it was quite extreme. And worse, it was my friend who needed urgent help.

Through a common friend, I had found out that Rohit, let's call him Rohit was suffering from chronic anxiety attacks, insomnia and worst of all hallucinations. In the past 6 months, he had cut himself, stopped studying, become a recluse, had random fits of anger, tried to strangle himself the list went on.

Honestly, it was quite frightening to listen to these accounts.

But what was worse was to find out that he had been suffering like this for months despite medication and infrequent therapy.

I clicked pictures of the tablets and sent them to my mom who’s a doctor and as anticipated the drugs were too strong for him and not the right kind.

As if going through mental anxiety, hallucinations, the feelings of self-harm weren't enough. My friend here was being prescribed the wrong doses of the wrong medicines to cure him.

We immediately took him to another doctor to get him new medication.

If this was happening to a brilliant 20-year-old, in a completely safe environment, I couldn't fathom what these medicines were capable of.

What are your Drugs Doing To You?

We get a headache, we pop an aspirin, we get low blood pressure we eat chocolate. But when it comes to the brain, what do we do?

It made me seriously question the role of drugs in people’s mental health.

How do these drugs work? What do they do? Do we really need drugs?Are they replaceable? Whats the data Supporting drugs being successful to treat mentally unwell people?

As a biology major, we are often taught the different areas of the brain. While we love considering the brain an enigma. In an attempt to understand it, it is often likened to a machine.

A complex machine with different sections performing different functions. The neurons are like little gears that keep internal machinery moving, while the brain chemical or neurotransmitters are like fuel that the machine needs to keep it firing and useful.

So just like when a machine gets spoilt we try to change the gear that caused the problem, or maybe it needs more oiling to keep it running. That is exactly how doctors tend to approach the brain. If they see a problem they study it extensively figuring out what’s causing the problem and try to change that part. And when science discovered that depression was in some way correlated to lowered serotonin in the body. They did what any brain mechanic what do, they come up with a way to increase the serotonin levels in the nervous system.

This is what created an Antidepressant.

Now there are several kinds of antidepressants some of them increase the serotonin, dopamine, or norepinephrine in the central nervous system.

The truth is this technique works. The data from hundreds of peer-reviewed studies show that the drugs are helping people.

But there are a hundred more papers showing that they aren't helping enough.

The doctor we took my friend to diagnosed him with OCD — obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was given a paraphernalia of drugs to help him get through each day. Despite being on six different medications — ranging from antidepressants to antipsychotics, to sleep-inducing drugs. He was expected to be on these drugs for at least a few years. Yet within a fortnight, he had to be sent home for recovery. Instead of an academic semester, his timetable was spent between doctors visits, therapy and distraught parents.

This is a textbook case of a person who should have recovered from medication. Every data states — cases of mental health which cannot be treated with treatment and therapy, show effective recovery with these drugs over long periods of time. But even after 6 months of medication now he still gets panic attacks, is occasionally suicidal and extremely aggressive.

The Data I’m Trying to Believe

WHO states that currently 450 million people in the world are mentally unwell, and at one point every fourth person in the world will go through a period of mental illness. With such predictions, we should have been able to have a foolproof system of therapists, drugs, counsellors, social support systems in place to help people.

40 to 60 people are said to have recovered with antidepressants and antipsychotics, which may be better than the recovery of people given placebos. But there is no guarantee that these drugs will have any effect on you. Moreso the chances of relapse are high, so you're probably going to be taking these drugs forever.

Its time we start looking at Mental Health as a lifestyle disorder rather than just trying to tweak some chemicals in the brain. Yes, we don’t know what the drugs we’re administering actually do. But we do know that there are more methods than medicine to treat mental illnesses.

Every mental health patient should go through therapy but instead of immediately resorting to medications which are clearly not impactful enough and are permanent. We must really look at alternate forms of treatment for Mental health patients.

1. Nutrition and Diet based Therapies

Everybody has different nutritional requirements. Tweaking those can be quite effective. There’s an entire article explaining the science behind this.

2. Music, art, dance — Creatively relaxing Therapies

Getting an opportunity to release endorphins — hormones good for our body health by doing things we love and consider relaxing is an effective way to treat mental afflictions.

3. Flora and Fauna Therapies

Being a homo sapien automatically makes us an animal. yet we often forget to connect with our roots, maybe going back to the origin can make a significant difference to our well being.

4. Meditation, Yoga, Psychotherapy

These techniques are not only relaxing and calming but an age-old method to tap into the subconscious. If that and a little bit of faith works for you then there can nothing better than treating mental illness, with some good energy from the mind.

I am a biologist, I have a tendency to look for scientific proof for everything. Yet the truth is somethings work and have not yet been adequately researched by science to make a conclusion on. If they work for you try them. They might save you from another dose of drugs.

Today we’re going through a pandemic. Doctors are trying different medicines each day and lives are being lost while on the other hand, some people are recovering without medicines.

“Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so.” — Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book

Science does not have the answer to everything. It might have your answer in the future. But you will probably find your answer before science does. Please use it. It doesn't have to be an antidepressant.