Pills or Coaching - you decide!

I read this recently which just sums up my feelings.

According to landmark research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month, drugs like Prozac and Zanax are effective in that they lift depression in most patients. However…

That benefit is hardly more than what patients get when they, unknowingly and as part of a study, take a dummy pill – a placebo.

In other words, when antidepressants make you feel better, their effectiveness comes largely from your belief that they will work! More and more scientists who study depression and the drugs are concluding, antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs!

If studies like this hold up, then our culture is on the brink of a major shift – one that recognizes that the change is not in the medication… it’s in the person.

For years now, when someone’s experienced anxiety, disappointment, sadness, or loneliness, we’ve had the underlying faith that if all else fails, “there’s a pill for that.” But if antidepressants continue to be discredited by clinical studies, what’s going to happen? Will medical practitioners keep prescribing “tic tacs” to their patients?

Or will we see a new demand for practitioners who are exquisitely skilled at managing their patient’s meanings, guiding their clients to understand their needs, shifting their relationships, creating a vision for their life so that they can feel progress every day while moving towards their goals?

What do you think? If mood pills are no longer seen as the cure-all, what will be the new default answer for our culture? Is this a big opportunity for coaches and Strategic Interventionists?

Recently I have heard of more and more people being prescribed ant-depressants by their GP's.  And they take them without question!

Surely the question to be asked is WHY!!!  What is causing the increase in depression symptoms.

Think about it for a while...  We all live in these amazing bodies that can do all sorts of complex chemical reactions in a millisecond to keep us alive.  Not one of us has to think about breathing, or keeping our hearts beating.   In fact our bodies are designed to work perfectly given the correct environment. And that's the rub.

In today's modern world we bombard our bodies with environmental, physical, chemical and emotional stressors.  Our environment is compromised.  Which brings me back once more to the fact that the answer isn't OUT THERE but IN HERE.

To recover equilibrium start by taking responsibility for yourself, your choices, your actions and most of all your THOUGHTS.

For more help with this visit the FREE MEMBERS AREA of my website and download the complimentary coaching course 'Simple Steps to Success'