Drugs in the form of tranquilisers (and many psychotropic drugs are in fact tranquilisers, major or minor) can help with short-term relief of symptoms for those in acute distress. Aside from this use, I'm saying that:
* The well-known placebo effect accounts for much of any positive effect.
* The chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain-theory has long been thoroughly debunked.
* Many of the drugs trials involving psychotropics have been deeply flawed in a variety of ways - for example being approved on the basis of of minimal “statistical significance” (compared to placebo, for example), when this has little to do with real-world effectiveness.
* Given the many - and often severe - side-effects associated with psychotropic drugs, they should be given as a last resort (except in emergency situations) rather than - as usually now - as a first resort. (The reasons for this first resort are several and too complex to go into here.)
Regarding this last point, Robert Whitaker (author of Anatomy of an Epidemic) expressed it well:
“Let's say you have a drug that provides a relief of symptoms in 20% of people. In placebo it's 10%. How many people in that study do not benefit from the drug? Nine out of 10. How many people are exposed to the adverse effects of the drug? 100%”
I am not talking from a position of ignorance - I'm professionally involved in the field of mental illness, mental healthcare, and wellbeing.
