Question: How do you feel about the prescription of drugs for depression and anxiety?

Sinead Balgobin answered on 9 Nov 2015:

Sometimes it’s necessary- brain science is really complicated and difficult to research. One way of looking at the brain is that it is a bunch of electrical signals, and chemicals moving about, and if these are out of balance or don’t work like they should then you get depression or anxiety. If you can prescribe a drug that balance those signals and chemicals, then that’s good, right?

But it doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes there are bad side effects, sometimes you stop the chemicals and signals from making you feel bad, but you end up not being able to feel very much else at all. “The Hard Problem” is the question about what how how the brain works- how do those signals and chemicals create emotions, thoughts, memories? It is far too complicated for scientists to really figure out just yet, which is why mental illness can be hard to understand and treat.

There are ways to help though- taking actions and coming up with ways to cope with anxiety and depression can work really well for some people: by analysing how they feel, and what makes them feel better can help them to focus on being well. For other people, drugs work- they have been really helpful for some of my friends trying to cope with anxiety and depression, when they couldn’t find other ways to help them. There isn’t one thing that works for everyone, but I trust in scientists to one day figure it all out (or at least, find more answers) so that we can help everyone who lives with depression and anxiety.