In the case of bipolar disease, a lot of people don’t want to take their meds because they find the manic state truly enjoyable. However, it usually isn’t hard to get them to resume taking the meds, because the depression that follows is pretty killer.
Another problem is that if you take Lithium, the “gold standard” treatment, that’ll get your kidneys after 20 years or so.
Usually, finding the right drug for an individual patient is not easy. It’s a process of trying drug after drug, until you find something that works. It can take months to fully test each drug and drug combination. Patients often get tired of this. They get sick of what they see as incompetent psychiatrists. Psychiatrists are often rather unfriendly people, too, unlike therapists. So patients say “screw it” until the next time they find themselves in the hospital.
Then, as drhat77 said, there’s the “who is me?” issue. Am I the me when I was manic? Or depressed? Or is the real me, the me on meds? If you have ideas that you must be natural to be “me” then you may be prejudiced against drugs. Our society overall is prejudiced against “unnatural” states. We prefer to keep our bodies “pure.” We often believe that pure and natural are better. We should handle our problems on our own.
I think that the more experience you have with life, the more likely you’ll want to stay on your meds. The more open-minded you are, the more likely you will stay on your meds. The more you understand science, the more likely you will be to stay on your meds. The more you hate being sick, .....
I accepted my diagnosis the minute I got it. That’s unusual. But, since I’m a researcher, I’d been doing my research, and I had diagnosed myself the day before. So I wasn’t surprised. I’ve stayed on my meds ever since, even though they didn’t seem to work for a while. I’ve been doing everything everyone with any credibility suggests to help me. And I still get upset, at moments like this (my eyes are tearing up), because I am so angry about having to deal with this, and so unsure that I’ll be able to survive it.
But I know it won’t go away, and my only choice is to deal with it as best I can.
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