After I posted a few articles on medication for depression, there was a debate about "how to cure the disease" and "whether to take medicine or not to take medicine".

Similar debates have been going on for a long time. In the face of mental illness, there are indeed many people who oppose Western medicine, oppose taking medicine to see a doctor, and advocate psychology, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, spirituality, yoga, etc., believing that these therapies are effective, not painful, no side effects, can cure the root cause, and will never recur.

For example, some netizens commented on my article and said:

From the diagnosis of depression to the effectiveness of treatment, it is extremely bad! Half of biphasic cases are misdiagnosed! What about the treatment effect? In the words of the doctor himself, "hit mosquitoes with cannons" and try your luck! This is a tragedy for patients, medicine and society! It is the patients and their families who suffer the most.

I have to feel sorry for this girl! Labelled by the hospital with a "biphasic" hat, what awaits her? Taking medicine can temporarily relieve the girl's symptoms, but the girl's real problems, academics, interpersonal ...... How to fix it? What about recurrence after discontinuation? What about other setbacks in your life in the future......

There is also a netizen who offered advice:

I don't agree with the doctor's diagnosis at all, so many medicines, the more I take them, the more stupid I become, so I just let her take poison and die early. The key is to resolve the mother-daughter relationship!! When the mother and daughter are close, the child is happy, and the symptoms will naturally disappear.

(Author's note: The girl mentioned by netizens is a patient mentioned in my previous article.) ）

In response to the above discussion, I would like to express my views as follows:

1. Modern medicine acknowledges its own limitations and acknowledges the complexity and long-term nature of treating mental illness. For example, for depression, statistics show that the effective rate of treatment is 70%. Bipolar disorder is even lower.

This is indeed unsatisfactory, but it is not "extremely bad" as the above-mentioned netizen said. After all, most of the 30 million people with depression in China who have medical records have been cured through Western medicine. If I give up Western medicine and medication, can I find alternatives? If not, then don't deny Western medicine for the time being.

2. About curing the root cause. In fact, in many cases, the difference between treating the symptoms and treating the root cause is not so big. In medicine, there is a theory of "symptomatic treatment" and "treatment of causes", and there is no distinction between superior and inferior. For many diseases, symptomatic relief is sufficient. For example, the cold is a self-limiting illness that can heal itself in about a week without treatment. To treat a cold, as long as it can relieve the symptoms of headache, nasal congestion, and sore throat, why treat the root cause?

3. About side effects. Side effects do exist, but they're not that scary. Because the probability of side effects is very low, they do not always occur. The size of the side effects has a lot to do with the patient himself, and also has to do with the internal environment when he takes the medicine. In any case, the side effects are insignificant compared to the devastation of mental illness. Therefore, between the disease and the side effects, there should be the "lesser of two evils".

4. About recurrence. Psychiatric disorders are indeed prone to recurrence after cure, but they are not irregular. Experience has proved that as long as the doctor's instructions are strictly followed, medication is adhered to, physical exercise, supplemented by psychological adjustment, the possibility of recurrence is not great.

5. Generally speaking, the current Western medicine treatment of mental illness is indeed not ideal, but there is no alternative to other therapies for the time being. It is a helpless choice, and it is the least bad choice. If you deny or abandon Western medicine for this reason, and only try other treatments, the consequences will be unpredictable. Advising patients not to go to the doctor and take medicine is extremely risky for themselves and others.

6. The controversy over therapies. I believe that given the overall low level of treatment for mental illness and the many unknowns, it is not easy to dismiss other treatments. In order to promote a certain treatment, we should not ignore the facts, exaggerate ourselves, and belittle others.

Medicine is a science. When discussing scientific issues, we must have a scientific attitude, that is, we should see our own limitations, and explore the unknown world with an open and inclusive mind and rigorous logic, rather than simply insisting on something, affirming something, and denying something.

In a word: the so-called scientific attitude is to always have a sense of awe for the unknown.