Importance of Combining Therapy with Medications

As a society, sometimes we have become dependent on medications fixing our mental health issues or feeling as though if we take medications it will be good enough to help us. An important thing to keep in mind is if you are having emotional problems or biological problems. A way to be able to differentiate between the two is looking at your present life: have there been any new stressors, is there a recent event that came up as traumatic, am I coming close to the anniversary of something traumatic, am I overwhelmed, am I taking care of myself through self-care, or has there been a dramatic change in my daily life? If you said yes to any of these questions, your mental health issues may not be biological and are instead emotional. Emotional problems are resolved within therapy, versus biological problems are solved with medications. It can be extremely beneficial at times to combine both medications and therapy, but it can be harmful to depend on one or the other without looking at what the real issue is.

Carmen Stites, LCPC

The Power of Language

     We often hear the terms “an alcoholic” or “a schizophrenic” when someone describes another person. This is referred to as “Pathology-First Language”, where a label defines an individual with a medical or psychiatric condition. Ever since the Civil Rights Era, there has been a push to change the way we talk about people with disabilities, medical conditions, or psychiatric diagnoses. Pathology-First Language puts the diagnoses before the person or uses the term as a person’s entire identity. Critics of this form of language say that it is dehumanizing, stigmatizing, and limits a person to an adjective. In response to Pathology-First Language, Identity-First Language (IFL) or Person-First Language has been used.

    In IFL and Person-First Language, statements such as “a person with alcoholism” or “a person with schizophrenia” is utilized. Supporters of IFL/Person-First say that the action of putting a person before their diagnoses or condition is a form of social etiquette and does not define a person by what they may have. IFL/Person-First avoids using labels to define a person and allows us to separate a person from their condition or diagnosis. However, it is not as simple as one or the other. In some communities, a person’s diagnosis/condition is their everyday lived experience and shapes how they experience the world. Such as in with advocates in the autistic community. Some prefer “a person with autism” versus “an autistic” and vice versa. Pathology-First or Identity/Person-First Language will continue to be a topic of debate in our world, it is for those with the condition in question to decide how they would like to be described.

Anna Faffler, LPC