The New York Times – Letters – Sunday Dialogue: Treating Mental Illness – LARRY S. SANDBERG – Published: May 25, 2013
Dr. Larry Sandberg is a psychoanalyst, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and the co-author of “Psychotherapy and Medication: The Challenge of Integration”. His letter to the Editor discusses the benefits of talk therapy versus medication.
“We tend to divide treatments for mental illness into “psychological” approaches and “biological” ones; the former typically involve “talk therapy” and the latter medication. But this either-or way of thinking obscures the fact that talk therapy affects the brain and is no less biological than pills.”
Many think of medication as a “quick-fix.” At best, it offers relief of symptoms while talking the medication. That’s a great thing. But ‘talk therapy’s’ lasting results are the key to ongoing wellbeing. One reader chimed it, “Until we learn, collectively and individually, that there are few shortcuts to what we value in life, least of all to our mental wellness, we will likely continue to feel the effects of our hurried, half-baked efforts.”
This medication versus psychotherapy discussion needs to end. For many people with acute symptoms, the solution is both/and, rather then either/or.
The evidence demonstrates that learning (or, “talk therapy”) does change the brain (the way that the brain’s neurons fire) and that those changes are lasting.