Did your doctor/psychiatrist give you informed information about your medication!
Question:
Did your doctor/psychiatrist give you informed information about your medication?
1. Were you provided with statistical information regarding the effectiveness of the medication?
2. Did your doctor tell you about the studies that were conducted with the medication? Were you told how 'significance' was defined when the medicine was compared to placebo?
3. Were you told about the results of postmortem and PET/fMRI scan results in the groups of people diagnosed with the disorder?
4. Did your doctor refer you to any literature/article information other than the medication insert?
5. Were you given information about how the medication works? If so, were you provided with any evidence?
6. Were you given factual information about the long term side-effects/risks of using the medication?
In my case:
1. No. 2. No. 3. No. 4. No. 5. Yes. - but very vague. My doctor compared the use of the med. with using insulin - but gave no evidence that there was something biologically wrong and could give no evidence that the medication 'corrected' this.
6. No
Answers:
I have an amazing psychatrist and if I ask him a question he will explain to me how the medication works. My therapist is good at that too, they also explain why they won't give me certian medications.
I always read about a drug that I am prescribed. There is a website called drugs.com where you can plug in the medications that you are on and it will give you any interactions, my doctors are pretty careful too.
I do have to watch if I go to the hospital or have an ear infection or something because those doctors are not as fastidious as I am and I konw what I take and what the major interactions are.
I wasn't always as wise to this because when I started on medication I had one doctor who like to "throw drugs at me." She would give one drug on top of another until I was sicker than I started.
So 1-4 would be no and 5 - 6 would be yes. It depends on the doctors and I think on your own knowledge of your illness.
Medication is a tough pool to navigate.