I thought I would use this wildcard "unblog" to talk about last week's seminar. I really enjoyed the conversations, and I thought the topices flowed fairly well. One topic of discussion that really struck my fancy was when we got into the wild world of medication. As I have mentioned, I am a psychology major, and I have made a strong stance that I will NOT be going into psychiatry for this very issue. I am not so very hard core against medication that I cannot see when it is useful and even necessary in certain situations, but I do believe it is widely overused in today's medical society. I am going into behavioral psychology because I strongly believe that many of today's problems that "need" medication can be dealt with through some type of behavioral therapy. Although the process may at times be long and arduous, at least you will still have a functioning liver at the end of it all. I believe medication should be a last resort for issues such as ADHD and ADD, bipolar disorder, depression, etc...

I work with young children and I happen to have a boy in my class that is being tested this month of ADHD. I got so frustrated when his teacher was telling me about this because she said, "Im so glad this kid is finally getting tested for something. I hope they just say 'yep he's got ADHD' so they can put him on some medication and make him calm down!" I didnt feel it was my place to say anything, but I was thinking, THIS KID DOES NOT NEED MEDICINE! I think he just needs to eat better and get a little more exercise and play time during the day to get out his energy...but thats just me.

I know that some people legitimately need medication, and I'm not bashing it's use completely, I just believe that it is overused these days for a multitude of reasons, none of them being legitimate. And unfortunately I think that a lot of the blame lies with the state. The people in power (governers etc...) want to see instant gratification while they are in office. Most of them are not willing to dump a lot of money into a program that is not going to see benefits for 5 or 10 years in the future, when they are out of office, when they can support the dispersion of medication and instantely be praised for how people are getting better under their reign of power.

Well those are my rantings for the day....