Why is the treatment of depression a matter of trial and error? What's different about?

treating depression or anxiety from a physical illnesses? Is the treatment the same (trial and error) with other mental illnesses?
Answer:
Partly because psychology is not an exact science. unlike other fields of medicine, where they can do lots of research, the brain and emotions can not be measured.
when you have a physical illness, like a broken leg, they know what is wrong and causing you pain. But when you have depression or anxiety there is no exact way to measure it so it is just trial and error.
Sometimes even with regular medicine and health it can be trial and error as well. Take Diabetes for example, the doctor has to try different types of meds to see which is best for your specific type of diabetes.
And yes with most other mental illnesses they have to use the trial and error method.

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Yep, it is.

Medication is trial and error. Therapy isn't. After you stop treatment, only about 20% of people who took meds don't relapse. About 80% of people who did therapy stay cured. Its about changing the way you think instead of just treating the symptoms. In additon, therapy has no side effects.

For example, if you had a limp from an injury, and you continued to limp, eventually it would be more comfortable to limp, even after the injury had healed. They could give you medication to make the pain go away, but that dosen't solve the problem. You need physical therapy to fix the limp. See what I mean? Its fixing the problem instead of masking the symptoms.

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Depression treatment is trial and error because not all medications work the same for people. For example, on anti-depressants, some people gain weight, while other people lose weight. Everybody has a different reaction to medications and some people are more susceptible to certain chemicals than other people.

When depression is a symptom of another illness, the illness must be treated in order for the depression to lessen.

Most mental illnesses are difficult to treat, because the treatment involves medication that people may or may not respond to. This goes for other illnesses or problems as well, because some people get pain relief from motrin, but not tylenol with codeine, which is stronger.

People's individual body chemistry determines which drugs they reacts to and how strongly.

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Treating physical illnesses is often a trial and error process, as well, though there are some general guidelines as to what is most likely to be effective (e.g., antibiotics are typically likely to be effective for bacterial illnesses, but a given patient may respond better to one particular family of antibiotics than to another).

Similarly, treating psychiatric illness is often a trial and error process, though there are some general guidelines as to what is mostly likely to be effective (e.g., SSRIs are likely to be effective for depression, but a patient may respond better to one particular SSRI than to another).

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Partly it's because even psychiatrists will admit they don't know exactly how the anti depressants work. For a good discussion of this, get 'Feeling Good' by Dr David Burns; you need the revised, updated version.

In addition, people's responses to anti depressants vary so much; you could ask ten people who all took the same medication, and probably get ten different responses!

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I have both and think medicine save me from going nuts know I have my mind uncontrolled

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The hardwiring in the brain differs from person to person. Accurate diagnosis is difficult do to a lack of completely objective tests.

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Unfortunately, mental illnesses are all trial and error because everyone's psyche is different and one medication may work for one person and not another. There are also similarities from illness to illness so it could be possible to be diagnosed and treated for something and then later they determine that it is something else and have to begin treatment in another way. Just like ADHD and bipolar. There are many similarities and many differences and it is hard to judge sometimes.

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different people with different diagnosis respond to different meds and sometimes it takes awhile to get the right drug/combination to relieve the symptoms

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It is very difficult to treat because with mental illnesses, your nerotransmitters in your brain can be messed up, seratonin, dopamine, epinephrine, adrenaline, and one or a mixture of them can be messed up, so they have no tests to measure how much or which one is lacking, so they try different meds until one or more suits you and you start feeling better!

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I have found that simple anti-psychotics and mood lifters are really doing more harm than good; I know that Natural Medicine has had better effects on mental cases and because it is all natural, it doesn't have side effects as most meds do. New Sun carries a full line of medications for anxiety, depression, etc. You should check out the link below for more info.

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