I tend to feel the same way. The medication is obviously useful in some cases and for some conditions, but there's also a pushback against the notion that it isn't the best solution for other cases and conditions. There are cases where other solutions might be healthier, especially in the long term, but the availability of a potential pharmaceutical fix interferes.

And look at the new batch of weight-loss drugs. It's a similar circumstance. It's a wonder drug in many ways, helps so many people that wouldn't have been helped otherwise. Yet, also being used in some cases as a shortcut to avoid a behavioral change that would be advantageous for a person to do.

It is important to remember that there are people for whom these drugs are literal lifesavers. And at the same time, there are those for whom the drugs enable avoidance of fixing a root cause.

Clothes too. If you're cold, why not just move to a tropical country where you can be naked, as nature intended?

Agreed. They have to be significantly helping at least some, but we can't say who these people are for certain yet, or how many there really are.

And yes, in some cases, no other options are possible, so even if the evidence is pretty dismal for their effectiveness, they are still broadly safe enough to definitely be worth a try. They probably just shouldn't be the first-line approach.

> I’m not trying to discount mental health, I just think there are better solutions than drugs to fix your state of mind.

Find one that's as effective on the general population.

I mean, sure, perhaps lifestyle changes are better. Can you get a higher percentage to change them and improve people's lives than we currently can with drugs?

As a top performer in school, I definitely think (and still point out), that you can get fantastically high results in SAT/GRE without paying any test prep service. I and many of my peers did it. There are better solutions than paying those services. But how many who don't pay do as well as those who do? I can tell them how to study as much as I can, but the reality is that statistically, people who attend will do better than if they don't.

From a medical standpoint, telling people to change how they live and think has a fairly low success rate. The best options usually don't work on the masses.

I can't believe we've normalized taking insulin as a society. There are better ways than drugs to fix your Type 2 diabetes.

I don’t get why people are so negative about drugs. They’re just a medical treatment, with pluses and minuses. If they help and they’re not too costly then what’s the big deal? Half the population is addicted to caffeine and nobody cares. A huge number of people need medical intervention for other things and we don’t get this quasi moralistic opposition to them.

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