Jose Luis Turabian

The biologistic tendency of medicine, and also of psychiatry, brings with it an increasingly early, more intense, longer-term use in mild clinical conditions and in mental health situations reactive to contexts of daily life (personal problems, couple, family, work, socioeconomic, etc.) of psychotropic drugs. However, practical experience in general medicine indicates that psychotropic drugs cause permanent biological changes that can structure and chronify mental illnesses that would have evolved towards improvement without psychotropic drugs: they produce functional changes in thoughts, feelings and behaviours that over time make structural / organic and permanent. In this way the general practitioner in his continuity of care over time sees the results of psychotropic drugs: passive patients, unable to understand and face the causes and consequences of their situation; These patients with many years of psychopharmacological treatment continue to suffer similar levels of mental symptoms, but also their contextual situation has seriously deteriorated in a chronic way; they are unrecoverable patients. Current prescribing practices for psychotropic drugs need to be reformulated in light of the consideration of vulnerabilities and permanent adverse effects of treatment.

Keywords: Prescribing, Psychotropic drugs, Primary health care, Long-term outcome, Prognosis.

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