I've been feeling the need to address a topic for a long time. It's not strictly a couple's topic - it's a human topic and as such would certainly affect couples.
Every day someone new comes into my office on a psychoactive medication. These include, but are not limited to, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs. They are prescribed by medical doctors - mostly primary care physicians - who are driven by a sincere desire to help their patients. Here's a quick primer on the two most common mental health disorders.
Depression is extreme sadness or hopelessness that causes significant impairment in one's life. When people choose to depress they stop going to work, getting out of bed, taking care of their needs, and they often begin to see death as preferable to the life they are living.
Anxiety is extreme worry that causes significant impairment in one's life. When people choose to be anxious they take steps to make themselves safe like not leaving the house, frequent trips to the emergency room with imagined illness, rituals like frequent hand washing or lock checking, phobic avoidance of places-objects-or situations. Descriptors like extreme and significant impairment are what qualify these behaviors as mental disorders needing a medication combined with talk therapy.
Now back to the people I see every day on psychoactive drugs. They are raising families, in relationships, going to work, eating, sleeping, and generally taking care of their needs. Many are doing these daily activities while dealing with sadness, discouragement, worry, fear, a lack of hope, loneliness, low self esteem, guilt, anger, shame, and stress-stress-stress. While these feelings can be unpleasant and distracting they serve an important purpose in the human body - they are a flashing red light that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. What's wrong with feeling sad when something awful happens….that's normal.
Instead of fixing problems in our lives - we turn to chemicals to numb our pain. When we numb our pain we are less motivated to find solutions to our problems and they often just continue indefinitely. Even if we want to fix our problems, the psychoactive drugs numb the part of the brain that is responsible for producing creative solutions so we're not able to fully use the natural resources that the Creator put into our brains for solving our problems.
I'm not advocating that you stop your medications today. I am advocating that you make an appointment today with a counselor, therapist, or pastor who cares about you as much as your primary care physician does and can help you generate solutions for your problems so that you can some day get off your medications. Thanks for listening.