Treatment Online

Fighting Mental Health Disorders On Your Own
> 11/17/2005 9:07:28 AM

Mind Hacks posted this morning on a disturbing trend. While the practice of sharing and selling prescription pills to friends is by no means a new one (as reported by the New York Times) it seems that many twenty- and thirty-somethings are blurring the line between recreational (and dangerous) prescription drug use, and actually using their own knowledge and experience to "treat" mental health problems.

When someone takes a Ritalin or Adderall for recreational purposes, the dangers, while often ignored by the users, are at least implicitly clear. The trouble is when friends begin to provide things like Prozac or Ativan to one another, diagnosing on half-baked information, as one woman in the NYT article does, "Clear-cut anxiety disorder."

The trouble created here is two-fold: first, those making the diagnoses are not trained mental health professionals, and are usually armed only with info pulled from the net; second, those receiving these drugs are lulled into a false sense of security. They have not addressed the problem, but masked it with a quick fix.

Taking prescription drugs that have not been prescribed to you is NEVER a good idea. Allowing friends to treat mental health issues with guess-timates and anecdotal information will not only lead to greater problems, but could in fact prove more damaging than the initial trouble.