Dangerous both physically and spiritually, psychotropic drugs are the go-to “fix” for the mental health profession.
The American Psychiatric Assn. prioritizes drugs as treatment
It’s understandable that a system with no moral foundation ignores spiritual danger — but you’d think that it would, at least, use some caution with regard to blatantly obvious physical threats. This is not the case.
Psychotropics are always listed as the main form of “treatment” for any struggling soul.
For example, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) lists “talk-therapy and medications” as the treatment for anxiety disorder. The APA does the same with depression, again elevating medication as the key remedy.
But this mistreatment only comes from misdiagnoses, for modern psychology has no lens other than the material. This is the reason why drugs are the answer for mainstream mental health professionals; that is, they believe the core problem to be a physical one when in reality it is metaphysical (beyond physics).
With regard to anxiety, the APA recommends “the first step is to see your doctor to make sure there is no physical problem causing the symptoms.”
With regard to depression, the APA states “brain chemistry may contribute to an individual’s depression and may factor into their treatment. For this reason, antidepressants might be prescribed to help modify one’s brain chemistry.”
So according to the APA, so-called mental illness is caused not by moral choices, but by irregular brain chemistry.
What Really Causes Anxiety, Depression
Despite this “chemical imbalance theory” never having been proved (nor can it ever be), the mental health system still holds to it because it’s what keeps people’s eyes away from the real cause of their problems. Better said, if people realized the cause of their problems was their own bad decisions rather than a chemical imbalance, they wouldn’t seek the usage of psychotropics — they would desire to authentically change their lives.
Dr. G.C. Dilsaver, founder of the Institute of Psychomoralitics, which studies and treats mental disorder from a Thomistic perspective, provides a more reasonable definition of anxiety:
So-called General Anxiety, as this name indicates, is certainly a psychomoral fear, for it is not a fear of this or that, but of everything; that is, it is trepidation of one’s very existence. As such, it is an anxiety that does indeed have a basis in reality, in the very existence of the person and his particular circumstances in life. For God’s ways are not man’s ways, and thus reality necessarily threatens a person’s pride and self-love.
Psychomoralitics also defines depression, also known as self-pity, as “a defense that arises from anxiety. This defense triggers an instinctual flight reaction from anything that threatens one’s pride.”
Dr. Dilsaver elaborates on this phenomenon, saying, “Psychomoral depression is specifically a sadness or self-pity that refuses to accept the humiliations of reality, of human existence, and one’s personal circumstances.”
Accepting these humiliating realities of life is what purifies man and results in his maturation, Dilsaver insists.
Depression is frequently mistreated with drugs
Anxiety and depression both involve the choice to run away from reality, and it is choice (free will) that modern psychology does not take into account. As such, anxiety and depression are “remedied” by mind-numbing psychotropics. On top of that, counselors are not allowed to tell their patients what these disorders actually are, for this would contradict the entire foundation of the mental health profession.
Psych System Admits: Drugs Make it Worse
Psychotropics, indeed, are detrimental to the spiritual life of man when they blunt and numb reality, but they also have serious physical defects as well.
The mental health industry, itself, now has studies showing psychotropics make a person more susceptible to the very symptoms it seeks to alleviate.
For example, one industry article noted, “Evidence from many sources confirms that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) commonly cause or exacerbate a wide range of abnormal mental and behavioral conditions.”
The mental health industry admits antidepressants worsen conditions
(Photo: Anxiety.org)
For clarity, SSRIs are a class of drugs predominantly used as antidepressants.
If depression is really caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, then use of antidepressants would make sense — but it is not, and the mental health system also admitted this in 2015.
An article reflecting on the industry noted: “In the last decade, widespread claims of chemical imbalance in depression have essentially been withdrawn by both the profession of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry.”
Although the mental health system, on the surface, points these things out, it still holds on to the necessity to treat spiritual deficiencies with something material and superficial.
Bottom line, the modern mental health system ignores the obvious spiritual and physical harms caused by psychotropics. If it genuinely acknowledged these realities, modern psychology and psychiatry would go out of business.
Church Militant has put together a 10-part series on this very topic. Go Premium and watch the seventh episode of Church Militant’s brand new series Mental Health: Catholic Perspective to learn more.