Five Drug-Free Ways to Foster Mental Health

Each year, millions of dollars are spent on medications promising relief to people suffering the symptoms of mental illness.  Recently though, some physicians have opted to steer their patients towards alternate, drug-free treatments either in conjunction with, or in place of these prescriptions.  These treatment plans offer patients additional options to explore before turning to medications which can often have troublesome and even dangerous side effects.  Each therapy is unique, but they all seem to share one common characteristic:  Unlike popular medications such as Prozac and Effexor, which merely treat symptoms of depression and anxiety, these alternate treatments seek out and treat the underlying causes of the illnesses.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

· Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction was developed by Jon-Kabat Zinn, a PhD at the University of Massachusetts, in 1979.  MBSR uses intentional, present-moment awareness to help people tap into whatever is happening in their life as it unfolds, without judgment or curiosity.  The process, based on mindful meditation, helps people to become more skillful and creative in their responses to real world stimuli, eliminating destructive habitual patterns such as anxiously awaiting the future, chronically focusing on the past or just going through the motions of life without regard to what’s happening in the now.  It is universal and easily accessible, allowing people the ability to develop intelligent and thoughtful reactions to events and circumstances as they are happening, and to construct unique, healthy reactions in response.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

· Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is similar to MBSR, in that it combines present-moment meditative practices with conventional cognitive therapy techniques.  The therapy, developed by Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale, and based on Zinn’s MBSR model, allows participants to cultivate a right-now awareness of what is happening within them.  MBCT uses Eastern meditative techniques and cognitive therapy to help patients become acquainted with the different modes of the mind that can often characterize mood disorders and allows for the development of new, healthier responses to harmful stimuli.  By focusing on what “is” rather than all the potential negatives that “could be,” MBCT helps people break harmful, repetitive responses and patterns that can lead to a variety of disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Subconscious Restructuring

· Most treatments for conditions such as depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) look for external causes for the trauma affecting individuals, and then seek to treat that cause.  This can be a very long and expensive journey for patients.  While certainly well-meaning, treatments such as these are nothing more than a series of educated guesses that can take years to complete and are often completely ineffective.  Subconscious Restructuring offers something quite different.

Developed by PhD Kelly Burris, SR coaching takes a look at how individuals process information at the deepest level of their subconscious.  It guides patients through a method which allows them to recognize and have immediate access to potentially harmful subconscious patterns, and thus be able to alter or eliminate them. Using this technique, people are able to identify the internal cause of their disorder, rather than speculate on possible external factors.

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

· Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a noninvasive medical technique designed to magnetically excite the neurons of the brain.  Weak, electric currents are introduced into the tissue that makes up the brain which in turn triggers brain activity that can be studied and evaluated.

rTMS, as it is commonly referred, lasts longer than a single stimulation and it is thought to either increase or decrease the excitability of what doctors call the corticospinal pathways within the brain.  Scientists believe this stimulation technique can effect changes in the synoptic efficacy of the brain and has been offered as a treatment solution for long-term depression and other illnesses.

Magnetic Field Therapy

· Magnetic Field Therapy is a process that uses magnets to help treat mental and physical ailments.  The theory behind the efficacy of MFR is that in order to maintain health, the body must be in balance with its electromagnetic field.  Utilizing electrically charged or static magnets, practitioners seek to alter the magnetic field in patients with emotional disorders, by bringing their bodies into balance with the earth and the magnetic field that surrounds it.

The advantages of the therapies listed above, in addition to other available treatments not mentioned, are significant.  All of the treatment plans focus on the causes of mental and mood disorders, and they give people who are suffering from the often frightening symptoms, a variety of treatment options to explore before resigning themselves to a medication ritual that is often arbitrary and dangerous.

How Safe Are Mental Health Prescriptions?

Mental health treatment, despite recent advancements in the field, continues to carry a stigma which suggests abnormality and promotes exclusion.  Moreover, mental health continues to be segregated from the field of General Health, and the serious nature of these illnesses is regularly discounted.  Those suffering from common ailments, such as depression and anxiety, not only face a litany of troubling symptoms, but are forced to suffer these symptoms secretly, in fear of being stereotyped or profiled by a world that remains in ignorance about mental illness.  When mental health patients finally decide to seek treatment, many are “at the end of their rope,” and are willing to try just about anything in hope of returning to a “normal” life.

The first step taken by doctors is usually a strategy which involves prescribing medication, thought to ease persistent symptoms.  Doctors hope to control the symptoms of depression and anxiety by adjusting the levels of certain chemicals in the brain.   Today’s most prescribed drugs fall under a category called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.  SSRIs work to control the brain’s level of serotonin—a neurotransmitter which regulates mood and behavior.  Drugs belonging to this class include brand names like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil and are prescribed at an alarming rate.

Many patients have experienced some degree of relief from these medications, but predictably, drugs of this kind are not without their problems.  Most people report at least some detrimental side effects when taking SSRIs, and in isolated cases, these drugs have proven dangerous, if not fatal.  The most alarming side effect, a propensity for violent and self-destructive behavior, including suicidal ideation, seems to be experienced very early on in a medication regiment, and is especially profound in young adults.  The school shooting rampage in Columbine, gave rise to heated debates over antidepressants and adolescents, as it was documented that at least one of the shooters was being treated with these medications.  Other school shootings show similar evidence to support this alarming correlation.  In addition, suicide rates for young adults taking SSRI medications are five times that of their non-medicated peers.

These SSRIs have a laundry list of side effects and many experts wonder if they are not creating more problems than their solving.  Here’s a short list:

SSRI Side Effects:

Agitation

Anxiety

Insomnia

Sweating

Tremors

Loss of appetite

Sexual difficulties

Impotence

Effexor, a popular drug that lies outside of the SSRI category, is commonly prescribed to treat both Depression and Anxiety disorders.  It too comes with a suitcase full of troubling side effects and has also been known to cause increased blood pressure in patients.  Hypertension is the leading cause of heart attacks, and the use of Effexor has been linked now to heart conditions that have proved fatal.

Why should the solution put you at risk of more disease, likely worse than what you started with, and even increase your chance of death? It shouldn’t.  Think about this.  Your car breaks down in the middle of the desert. Say you find a solution, but the risk if you choose it is that your car might blow up and you’ll die.  The really isn’t any question that 99% of us would walk 100 miles if needed in that hot desert heat in order to find another option right?

The logic behind this thinking is exactly why many promising new drug-free alternative therapies are quickly becoming more popular.  The time is now to seek out and only support solutions that are proven to work, with the bare-minimum side effects, zero preferred.

Within this environment, characterized by a barrage of prescriptions, some doctors are seeking a more comprehensive approach to mental health.  Cognitive therapy and behavioral modification are used in conjunction with medication to learn more about the deeply hidden causes of these ailments.

More recently, techniques such as meditation, magnetic therapy and subconscious restructuring have been employed as well.  The goal:  identify and treat the root of depression or anxiety, rather than just the symptoms.

Natural supplements—vitamins and minerals—are also being used as an alternative to prescription medication.  Find out more about 10 mental health supplements here.

It seems today there are as many treatment techniques and supplements as there are patients, and more will undoubtedly emerge, trying to capture a piece of the mental health market.  That’s not necessarily bad news, it may even be encouraging.  The trend to find alternate treatments—treatments which are more holistic and comprehensive in their approach—is promising, in that it seeks to replace the singular approach that exists now, which relies predominantly on potentially harmful drugs.