Should medicines be used to treat depression?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. needs a medical solution. The other is to think that no mental problem requires a medical solution.
It’s all simply in the mind, just give it to your thoughts, everything will be alright. Both these are extremes. And both need to be avoided.
I’ll explain this more from a conceptual perspective. As I said earlier, the soul, the mind and the body. These three are there.
The mind is like the software, the body is like the hardware. The brain is a part of the hardware. It’s like the central processing unit of the machine, of the device.
Now, whatever we do, it originates from the soul, it’s rooted through the mind and it comes to the body. So, for example, right now I raise my hand. So, I had the thought of raising the hand, it came in, it channeled through the body.
Now, if this hand is paralyzed, then although I have the intention to raise my hand, I just can’t, because it’s damaged over there. Similarly, if, just as the hand is a tool for movement, similarly, the brain is a tool for consciousness. When a tool is damaged, if there is some structural damage in the brain, if there is some chemical imbalance in the brain, then that cannot just be wished away.
That has to be dealt with by medical means. So, if there is, if a person is repeatedly depressed, person is chronically depressed, and it is found that there is a structural or chemical issue in the brain, which is causing the depression, then taking medication is essential at that time. Now, the challenge comes over here that taking medicines can become a shortcut.
So, whenever I feel, whenever I feel worried, whenever I feel fearful, whenever I feel negative, I just take a tranquilizer, I just take antidepressant. So, there are even psychologists, psychiatrists themselves, who have written books pointing out the problem with this approach. There is a book written by a prominent psychiatrist called Cracked, why psychiatry makes things worse.
I need to use an example. That’s a case which is given in many other places. There was a subject who was told to go to six different psychiatrists.
And he was told to describe a set of symptoms, which he did not have at all. So, you know, I see images, I hear voices, I feel depressed, I have palpitations, like that. And he went to six different psychiatrists, and all six of them diagnosed him differently.
And they prescribed different treatments. And actually he had no problem. Just seeking it, to test it, basically.
Now, why did it happen like this? It’s not that the psychiatrists were bad or manipulative. It is just that psychiatry is not as tangible a science as, say, surgery. Or if I have a fracture, I can see it.
If I have an infection, if I have an infection, I can actually do a blood sample and find that, okay, this particular germ is there in your body. But when it comes to problems with respect to emotions and the brain, mental health issues, the subject described the symptoms. And among the symptoms that were described, the psychiatrists had to infer, okay, based on this, what is the probable malady.
And if one particular symptom is emphasized by one psychiatrist, another symptom is emphasized by another psychiatrist, and the two can hear the same symptoms, but based on what they emphasize. Now, again, it may not be that they are again doing it because of any bias. It may be.
But it may be that the subject while narrating itself may emphasize one symptom at a particular time. So it’s a lot of guesswork involved over there. And that’s why sometimes people just get caught in the medicines.
And this doesn’t work. This works a little bit. But then they become dependent on the chemicals.
And then after sometimes, the medicine doesn’t work, they need a higher dosage for that. And it can, it can become, the medicine can become a problem worse than the disease. So we cannot expect chemical solutions to human problems.
Going through anxiety, going through loss, going through adversity, going through bereavement. These are human experiences, which are just a part of being human. We can’t expect a chemical to solve this.
When we do that, when we try to, when we try to avoid the normal problems of being human by taking some chemicals, then we become, we set ourselves up for greater trouble. So that’s why I said the first step is decrease expectations. We expect that I should not have anxiety.
We expect that I should not have any loss. I should not have any bereavement. I should not have any betrayal.
No, that is the way of the world. So, as I said, one extreme is to think that there is no problem. The other is that everything is in the mind and no medicine is needed.
But the other is to think that everything can be solved by medicine. So both extremes we avoid. So we understand that the brain is the tool through which the consciousness is being rooted.
And if that tool is damaged in particular, damaged in a tangible way, and it can be quantified or measured, okay, this chemical is, this chemical is less in quantity, or this particular part of the brain is damaged. Then medication is essential. But for normal human problems, trying to expect that a psychiatrist will solve the problems, or even a psychologist will solve those problems.
Many people go to psychologists not so much because psychologists don’t give medicines, psychiatrists give. Psychologists go just because they want someone to hear them. Someone to hear them non-judgmentally.
So, now, that’s also happened because relationships have become more and more strained. Earlier, people, relationships were more enduring, people could trust each other. Now when that doesn’t happen, people start going to psychologists.
They pay them so that somebody will hear them. But then they found that in a psychologist you have to pay so much money and you have to speak everything out. I can just take a pill.
I feel better. But, so, I am going to talk this in a future session. About, I talked about decreasing expectation.
Does this mean not having any ambition? No, that doesn’t mean that. No, actually, instead of expectation, we replace expectation with contribution. Expectation means what is going to happen to me.
What others are going to do to me. Contribution means what I can do. So, that shift in focus if I bring.
So, then we get a sense of achievement, we get a sense of purpose. The context which I am using over here is that in the past, there were committed relationships. And when we commit to a relationship, others also commit.
So, there is a contribution from my side and there is a reciprocation from the other side. But for whatever reason, the relationship has crumbled now. So, then we expect that same support which we earlier got from a loved one, now we expect it from a psychologist.
So, the only commitment I make over there is, I give some money. But now, as things have gone down further, I think that, why do I go and tell everything to someone? I just go and take a penny. So, even that commitment of revealing my heart, that also I don’t want to do, I just want to take a penny.
So, basically, that ethos where we think that I should not have any problems. And if I have problems, I should just, medicine should be like a magic wand which removes the problems. That unrealistic expectation can cause greater distress.
So, certainly, medicines, if there is a tangible problem with brain function or brain chemistry has been detected, brain structure or brain chemistry is detected, then medication is required. But we shouldn’t expect that medicine itself will solve the problem. We need to solve every problem.
We need to ourselves grow up. And that growing up happens through our intellectual evolution, through our spiritual evolution. And that is the sustainable way by which we can grow beyond depression.