When the drugs don’t work

It is clear that medication for mental health difficulties does not produce anything like a cure.1 Taking medication is no guarantee that one will never relapse or experience a symptom again. This poses a problem for the over optimism of some biological psychiatrists. I became interested in responses to this problem during some research2 in which I interviewed users of psychiatric services, GPs, psychiatrists and CPNs. Throughout these interviews I encountered the same common explanations for why medication hadn't worked: the patient is a non-responder; is chronic; is on too low/high a dose; is on the wrong drug/too many different kinds of drugs; has not been compliant with their medication; has been wrongly diagnosed; some of the patient's problems are due to manipulative behaviour; there are odd exceptions