More than Medication
Mental health treatment is unique in medicine, and each individual person needs a unique plan of treatment. In psychiatry, we talk about what’s called biopsychosocial considerations of treatment. This means that treatment of mental health symptoms should include the biological, psychological, and social aspects of your life.
While medications may be important, they are only one piece of the puzzle. They work best when paired with therapy and healthy lifestyle choices.
Reducing the Impact of Your Symptoms
In thinking of each person’s unique biopsychosocial circumstances, we must remember that we do not have magic pills to fix things. Medications alone can’t change the choices you make, the actions of others, or your circumstances.
Our goal is to reduce the strength of your mental health symptoms’ negative impacts on your life. This may include taking a prescribed medication to help you sleep, feel less irritable, or better manage anxiety. Or maybe by improving your focus, you can better stay on-task, and see improvements in many areas of your life.
I encourage all my patients to think about their target symptoms, meaning, if they could “fix” two or three mental health symptoms, what would they be? Poor sleep? Feeling irritable? Low energy? Difficulty focusing? Having a clear diagnosis and target symptoms can help you and your provider choose the right medication, and help you determine if the medications are helping or not.
We're Here to Help
Making the decision to start a medication for treatment of mental health symptoms can be difficult. No matter how the process starts for you, if you decide to consider psychiatric medication management, Peak Vista has a team of providers able to help you navigate the decision.
