• Question: What would you consider the best way to treat a patient? Using medication or having more discussions with the patient?

    Asked by anon-216130 to Robert, Jasmin, Dennis on 12 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Jasmin Moon

      Jasmin Moon answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      This really depends on the person and also what their mental health problem is. It’s a bit different to physical health problems in that often mental health treatment is a case of trial and error, whereas if you break your leg you can almost guarantee the treatment will be the same no matter who you are or how you broke it!
      Usually a combination of medication and talking therapies is the best course of action, but sometimes people get better just using medication alone, and sometimes they get better just by talking to someone or doing cognitive behavioural therapy.

    • Photo: Dennis Relojo-Howell

      Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      It largely depends on the nature of the mental health issue. For instance, you would not just treat someone with psychosis with counselling. They need medication. You would not just give medication to someone who is depressed because they feel isolated.

    • Photo: Robert Dempsey

      Robert Dempsey answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      I think it depends on the individual – some people respond better to medication, others experience no benefit of taking medication or experience some unpleasant side-effects. For others, CBT and other talking therapies are really useful, but some people find CBT and some specific therapies to not help. CBT does tend to involve a lot of homework on the individual client’s part and may require a certain level of reflection on your own experiences, which some people may not be able to do (if they’re particularly unwell) or find unhelpful. There was a big trial of CBT for people with bipolar disorder (who were currently experiencing quite severe symptoms) – the trial didn’t show any big benefit of CBT over what the individuals were currently receiving in terms of therapy. I think we need more research to understand how these therapies work and who benefits from them (and why)… focusing on the individual’s needs and what works for them should be key (and may mean more medication… or more talking therapies… or a combination of the two)

Comments

  • Photo: Laura

    Laura commented on :

    Can I give an answer? I find that often, one of the biggest things that decides what the best treatment for someone is what they want. So, some people come to me wantign medication, and while I can’t give it to them we have a discussion about how it works, what the science says about what it does, and what people have said it feels like to them to take it. Other people come to me saying they definitely don’t want medication, and so we talk through the options they have like talking therapy (you might have heard of CBT or psychotherapy or counselling?), but also problem solving and something we call ‘psychoeducation’ (teaching people about how the brain and emotions etc work).
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    We do have guidelines in the UK published by a group called ‘NICE’ that tells us what the government (using a bit of research and value-for-money caculations) has decided we should recommend. Some kinds of problems are better researched than others, which makes some of the recommendations more thorough than others! Often, NICE suggests both medication and talking therapy are the way to go