Evil Deeds

You make a very general claim about medications efficacy relative to psychotherapy, but you offer very little evidence that psychotherapy is superior to medication. Most of the time medication is a much more cost effective therapy. And in many cases medication is vastly superior to therapy such as in ADHD. Instead of making this broad claim with little evidence, patients should look at medication and psychotherapy on a case by case basis.

The use of medications in general brings into question the idea of a human being as a "chemical machine" which can be regulated and considered "cured". We are benefiting from the new discoveries in psychopharmacology, but should we embrace chemical dependence over a willingness to spend time facing our problems? The new ideas of interpersonal neurobiology suggest that there are healing processes that can only occur with the participation of another person, that this process is often arduous and may take many months. Medications alleviate symptoms quickly and are cheaper than long-term therapy, but the underlying issues are not addressed. I agree that psychopharmacology has its place - the genie is out of the bottle - but as a complement to psychotherapy rather than its replacement.

The author of this article spends more time asking the reader questions rather than answering them himself.

Many psychologists and psychiatrists appear to take the most trivial view of stress. They do not seem to consider that there are the usual stresses of everyday life and then there is pathological stress. There is a big difference. And that is hidden in the reason why psychotherapy most often fails so really they are resorting to drugs. Psychotherapy takes the patient as a "stand alone item" in many ways. They do not consider that the others in their life, with whom they are in relationship, as etiological factors. The stress arises out of toxic relationships. That is the sort of relationship in which a toxic person, someone who won't hesitate to use ANY means to get their own way. To do that obviously will mean they get rejected and the other person runs away. So they have a two-faced approach. They typically stress the other person, over whom they want to gain power and influence in order to manipulate and control them, and at the same time they display a caring attitude and concern for what is really "their victim". If we don't take this matter into consideration then psychotherapy fails.
When we know this we go part way to defining pathological stress. In relationship ESP is at a premium. You see that even where the relationship is weak. So for instance in single blinded drug trials patients WITH THE DRUG know what they have and they get well owing either wholly or in part to a placebo effect. And we can compare this to a double blinded drug trial where the patients do not have the advantage of ESP because they are relationally distanced from the research doctors. And as you can see both groups will display a placebo effect, that is the ones getting the drugs as also those that get the blanks/dummy drugs. The reason is because a patient desperate to get well will say to themselves I got a 50:50 chance of having the drug so why not believe I got the drug. Thus a placebo effect right across the board. Anyway, it shows clearly enough that there is ESP.
In a personal relationship, especially a very close and trusted relationship, ESP is at a premium. What is done to stress the other? What is known as "a gun-carrying individual" is brought into the vicinity of the person that is to be stress and they are given potential access, such as a key to the house or office etc. They do not act strange and they do not use the gun or the key. Danger is all about potentials, the possiblity of suffering harm. The manipulator offer the idea that "something terrible can happen" and the victim reacts with what is known as the fight or flight response.. actually it is fear. Fear is the sum total of many processes in the body including an acceleration of the heart and raised metabolism, higher perception, lowered thinking processes until they decide on what the danger is about, decline of the digestive and reproductive systems. If the danger is hinted to be external then there is the decline of the immune system. If it is hinted at being internal then the immune system can be dangerously fired up (so AID/cancer/allergies/strokes etc).
Stress however is not simply fear. It is also any other emotion as may be present such as worry. And the coping habit /comfort zone (either depressed or accelerated breathing), which adds dangerously to the mix of process/events/reactions in the body.
When psychotherapy is done properly, there is no need of drugs AND there is the open road of recovery for the patient. Knowledge is the key. It requires the recognition and the support of getting out of a toxic relationship. It is not trivial because toxic people are networked so the person who needs to escape is up against a mob and not simply one person, be they a spouse or sibling or work mate, best friend etc.