Medication Vs Therapy

Throughout the years there has been many debates about the best anxiety treatment. Going back and forth between medication and therapy. Many feel medication can be too harsh for children while others feel it is the most beneficial. Therapy is the best way to treat childhood anxiety because therapy teaches tool that can be used to overcome anxious feelings, that can help in the long term, therapy treats more than just anxiety and can help treat any other issues that are caused by anxiety, and therapy can be adjusted to fit the needs of the individual.

Studies have shown that the use of medication works faster in treating anxiety than therapy. “Those given placebo pills reported early improvements in their depressive symptoms almost as great

One reason being that therapy teaches tool that can be used to overcome anxious feelings, that can help in the long term. For example “Hollon studied 240 patients with moderate to severe depression and found that patients who responded to cognitive therapy were significantly less likely to relapse into another bout of major depression than patients who responded to antidepressants and were later withdrawn from the drugs (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005)”(Smith).Medication is only effective when it is taken. A forgotten dose might mean a catastrophic accident. The patients with therapy proved that therapy can help reduce the possibility of a relapse. Therapy treats more than just anxiety and can help treat any other issues that are caused by anxiety. “"I would say at least half the folks who are being treated with antidepressants aren't benefiting from the active pharmacological effects of the drugs themselves but from a placebo effect," says Steven Hollon, PhD, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University who has conducted extensive research on the effectiveness of antidepressants. "If people knew more, I think they would be a little less likely to go down the medication path than the psychosocial treatment path"”(Smith). Like the evidence stated the effects that come from taking medication are very likely to be a placebo effect rather than actually changes, where therapy uses a variety of different methods to help solve anxiety issues, without the cause for concern of a placebo effect. Therapy can be adjusted to fit the needs of the individual. “...by providing more counseling, he was better able to understand the true nature of their concerns. Research supports his findings, showing that therapy can stimulate the growth of neurons and synaptic connections between neurons. Medication for depression, anxiety, and other emotional problems does not do this.