Transcript
I think medication can be a really helpful addition
to psychotherapy or it can actually be
a harmful addition to psychotherapy.
It depends on the type of medication that you take.
If people are taking antidepressants
at the same time they're doing
a trauma-focused psychotherapy,
then this can actually help them decrease their symptoms
to the point where it might be easier to engage in therapy.
They might find it easier to get up each day
and come to session and be willing to talk about
some of the things that they've avoided for so long.
But there's other medications,
these quick-acting anti-anxiety medications
that are also called benzodiazepines,
and these can actually interfere with psychotherapy.
So, these medications are the ones that you take
when you feel like you're starting to panic
and you swallow one, and within a few minutes,
you're feeling calm again.
The reason that this works against psychotherapy is because
in many treatments, we actually want you to be able
to feel some of that anxiety.
We want you to be able to face your fears
and really think through
some of the difficult issues around your trauma.
And if you're taking these medications
and they're lowering your anxiety,
you can't really get in touch
with those feelings in the same way.
So, if someone comes in and is working with me
in trauma-focused psychotherapy
and they're on an anti-anxiety medication,
my approach is usually to try to encourage them
to work with their prescribing doctor
to help them gradually, slowly, reduce their dose
so that we can have the room
that we need to to do our psychotherapy work.