ANNE HARRINGTON, PLACEBO, OR PSYCHOTROPICS

In “Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness,” historian and Harvard professor, Anne Harrington has written that the use of psychiatric drugs is a trial and error thing. It is not even know if the clients’ problems are psychological or biological:

·       We don't know enough about the biology of these mental disorders to know whether or not some of the reasons are biological — in the sense that medicine likes to think of these things as diseases — and whether it's just because they're having terrible problems,"

In an NPR.org interview, Harrington expressed doubts even about the effectiveness of psychotropics:

·       “The huge developments that happen in the story of depression and the antidepressants happens in the late '90s, when a range of different studies increasingly seemed to suggest that these antidepressants — although they're helping a lot of people — when compared to placebo versions of themselves, don't seem to do much better. And that is not because they are not helping people, but because the placebos are also helping people. Simply thinking you're taking Prozac, I guess, can have a powerful effect on your state of depression. In order, though, for a drug to get on the market, it's got to beat the placebo. If it can't beat the placebo, the drug fails.”

Simply put, we need to have hope, whether through the drug or the less costly (and probably less damaging) placebo. Interestingly, belief in a God who loves, protects, and forgives us is the ultimate “placebo.” However, our Savior promises to be far more than a placebo but an ever-present and omnipotent Parent who takes care of all our needs and for all eternity.

Why then aren’t psychiatric professionals encouraging their patients to go to church? Why the growing disdain for Christ, especially in view of the many who claimed to have been transformed by Him? The late psychiatrist, former Buddhist, and author of “The Road Less Traveled,” had become a Christian while observing his Christian patients improve over the years. He explained:

·       The quickest way for you to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.

·       Now what better news can there be than we cannot lose, we are bound to win? We are guaranteed winners once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us what we need to know on our journey. (Further Along the Road Less Traveled)