Are antidepressants being handed too easily

I find mood disorders very interesting, what I find more interesting is why doctors hand out antidepressants like it’s no problem, when they have so many side effects.

In my perspective psychotherapy is much better than drugs, but then again sometimes psychotherapy can’t do the job, and that’s when I believe that antidepressants should be administered, and even then I feel it should be as minimal as possible. Studies have shown that antidepressants are virtually ineffective when patients have multiple psychological disorders and/or suffered abuse or neglect during early childhood, while psychotherapy does work. Other benefits of psychotherapy over antidepressants are that drugs are usually used for long-term problems or life-long conditions of unhappiness. Psychotherapy also shows long term benefits, in reducing the likelihood of relapse over months or even years after the treatment has ended.

I believe that the over prescribing of antidepressants has become a problem, according to this article, many doctors who are not psychiatrist are prescribing antidepressants, in fact most of the prescriptions come from them. I feel like doctors are not trained well enough on the field of psychology to be prescribing antidepressants, I believe that they should refer the patients to either a psychologist or a psychiatrist, more so a psychologist and they can evaluated the patient and see it medication needs to be implemented into their lives; Other things to consider is the patients health, some people may not react well to the medication, specially to thoughts of suicide, and a patient’s health should come first. I leave you with this commercial of antidepressants, pay attention to all the side effects.