PsychoPharmacology vs. PsychoTherapy

By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.

Often Patients Benefit Greatly from PSYCHOTHERAPY ALONE;
But, when an Rx Drug is Needed, PSYCHOTHERAPY MUST BE ADDED
According to many psychiatrists, prescription psychotropic drugs (Rx meds aimed at treating
psychiatric disorders) are primary, and core, to the successful treatment of mental illnesses.
In actuality, the evidence for this long-held theoretic position doesn’t exist. And many psychiatrists
are not that profoundly trained in psychopharmacology (the science of psychiatric pharmaceuticals).
Leading some physicians, to prescribe subtherapeutic doses (medications in too low amounts to
have any beneficial effects). Subjecting very sick patients to increased chronicity (unrelenting,
stubborn painful emotional and cognitive symptoms), to intransigent problems in their social, work
and family interactions...and, ultimately to suicide.

Because of the above-mentioned risks to patients, psychiatrists and all other mental health profes-
sionals must, first, have had solid and rigorous psychiatric training. And all such practitioners abso-
lutely must be required to have expertise in doctor-patient interpersonal relationships.  Cold, aloof,
or superior-stance MDs who can’t feel the intersubjectivity of one’s own Self engaged with the
supplicant patient-Self can’t ever really help the patient’s psyche to heal.

Additionally, patients’ and family members’ fears of exposure of a psychiatric diagnosis may keep
patients from getting help at all.

And many high-census professional practices (whether private or government-run or whether a
charitable organization) are too inundated to allot enough time to diagnose individuals appropri-
ately.  Treatment approaches, therefore, will be inadequate because appropriately specific
therapeutic choices, that attack the illness precisely and effectively, rely on pinpoint diagnosis.
This refers, of course, to pharmacologic therapeutics (Rx drug therapy), which is not ever, any
more, the only way to attack and heal many mental illnesses. Even the major drug manufactur-
ers of all classes of psychotropic medications have their advertising agencies, on what I call
“Medicine Avenue,” create a new kind of psychotropic drug advertising campaign: Not a one of
them claims that their drug, or any drug, alone can help the mentally ill person.  Invariably, some-
where in their headlines or in their body copy, doctors will find a reference to the essentiality of psychotherapy in conjunction with the psychiatric drug prescribed.

Given the above wide-ranging deficits, a major deficiency in too many psychiatric MDs’
approaches will be blindness  to the multi-level values of psychotherapy.  Add to that those sub-
therapeutic dosages of antipsychotic, antidepressant, antianxiety and other Rx psychotropics...
and for insufficient durations to achieve the desired therapeutic results (reduced “voices” in
schizophrenia, mood-lifting in depression, quelled distress in anxiety)...and so-called “psychiatric
treatment” is for naught!

However, since it is now widely acknowledged that
PSYCHOTHERAPY WORKS EXTREMELY WELL
(it also alters brain chemistry...as well as brain structure) in a large majority of patients who are
not on any medications, and that in patients who absolutely require Rx psychotropics to modulate
their illnesses, PSYCHOTHERAPY DOES WHAT Rx DRUGS CAN’T DO.  It works in 
tandem with the essential medication by helping the patient handle all the social, behavioral,
feeling states, dreams, thoughts, worries, anticipations, etc. that no drug has the power to do.

Nota bene: About proof that PsychoTherapy Works, read my blog (below) of May 19, 2015 Psychotherapy Works: Scientific Proof.

(c) copyright 2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.

For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net

For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering
and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net

...and You can call me Dr. Helen