wellness coach so welcome ladies so we are actually continuing the dialogue around mental health that it is may or shortly thereafter when you're watching this and mase mental health awareness month and i am myself a person living well with mental illness and you know it's there such stigma around it that i think felt as so important for us to do this discussion and there's confusion too around that so if you didn't catch the first episode we just were talking in our last show about diagnoses and simp domes and how mental health can be a really challenging thing to diagnose you know it's not like blood pressure where there's one measurement and they say ok carol you've got high blood pressure little different on today's show we're going to talk about medication and this was actually the very first book where i i wrote  my twelve books that i robot this to me was most important because it was the plane at how i got better how i got my life back from depression and it's really what i've taught for twenty five years and what we've been doing here on the show in and out the tools to get well because here's the thing medication is only one leg of the chair you will not stay up on one learning so while medication is important for any illness guess what it can't be the only thing but when you talk about mental health twenty five years ago there weren't that many kids medications we had available and that's where science has come so far there was probably just a few or i can i give them a piece of paper give me a cheat sheet all right in the same cheat sheet will be available for you but i think one column you know if you have been to one call now you've got three columns of at least ten so and i think there's many that i probably left off too so so what i want to do is i want to kind n life anxiety and so commonly we have these four categories is kind of what we can boil it all down to now i gave you all that cheat she health care are not big business granting that oh so i want you to think about the scene t v commercials maybe you've seen the names in magazines you know because there's more in print magazines and they're on t v so we should have some ideas of names so go for it while i first without looking at the paper i know i've heard of olof ok where would you put an anti depressant yeah but here's what i want you to understand some medicines so here's what happens a pharmaceutical company comes up with a new medicine they have to spend years testing it honestly millions of dollars testing it because we know we need to know it's safe for us right and then what is happening is a food and drug administration says ok this is see if you can use it for depression because they tested depression but a lot of times are doctors who will use other medicine you know even though it hasn't been tested for that they well i was just thinking of now when with commercials after they you know they lure you into it then it's like if you suffer from this that you know by the end of the commercial there are so many side effects you're one who was well here's an important part you don't know about side effects if one person out of one hundred thousand had it they have to have to list their fullest you know and i would run into patients you know who would kind of look at those side effects and say oh my god we have to become educated we have to do our homework you know and not to kind of be scared away by those side effects but not also though discount them either and to weigh you know to kind of weigh the odds of what if i can be daunting and scary because i remember i was in a car accident and i still  have all this medicine from that car accident years ago because once i got it and i read the side effects i wouldn't take it because it yeah what if i'm one of those yeah you know like you know how can i say to you what's really important as we talk about medication is that nowadays coming up with safe ways to dispose of medication and so your township police department probably has a medication dropbox so you don't want to flush down the toilet no i heard of how  with coffee growing grinds and you could do that or you could go right by your local township department really box and drop it oh i didn't know that ok i have yeah all that is here form is used it's called the medication dropbox og i know in different counties it's different i know here in mercer county where we're at you know that i think almost every one of the townships has been able to get one in time never knew that they hear oh yeah and if you don't other place to do i would say is even just take it back to the honestly it's a very addictive medication value man's and it doesn't necessarily tree the disorder it treats the symptom of the anxiety but zoloft kind of treats the anxiety itself so valuable isn't that like a mood stabilizer oh believe it or not but in the fifties that was all they had that's what they are you ok nervous breakdowns which i got scott tell you all nerves don't break so i just had a flashback and i'm just hearing like from back way back then and you would it we had such a stigma to say oh grandma had a nervous breakdown and she's in this place yeah and this place yeah yeah which is probably a psychiatric hospital you know getting kind of sad that a lot of doctors will use an axe to treat anxiety but it really is like a band aid all it does is it it kind of cuts the feeling of the anxiety but it doesn't really speak to treating the disorder and so any here's the analogy i give i once had a young man come into treatment and he was on xanax you know he had bipolar disorder which meant his moods would kind of you know go way up and so that was kind of the brakes and he wanted his antics and he was so angry because we wouldn't use if these are bridges there are a short term they're meant to be used short term but long term not good and he sa the mood medicine that we were trying to give him and you know what he really i like that because it kind of has a little extra it's kind of like can give people a little extra buzz i mean it is an art they're going in or they're kartik to a degree was prozac there were other medications had really horrible side effects they used to call and try cyclic switch honestly i take one is generic kind of version it's old all the first time i started taking it my mouth would be completely dry so there's there's all the side effects and prozac really came along as a medication it helped a lot of people what they found out that it was awful very good  yeah a long long long long long time long time and what's interesting too is in war recently there are some psychiatrists my doctor that i worked with in our program also used it to help with some depression and so back in the fifty's there is three of mazing medications that came out store fellows stelazine thorazine and mellaril and these were again miracle medications because they help people with their thoughts and times right and so people could function but they had a lot of side effects that went along with them and so share a quill was actually a medication you developed that actually could help but didn't have a lot of side effects that went along with it well it's got some now but but it came out to is an anti psychotic but then what really made up happening is they found it the more they used it the more it helped other people with other things and so it's not uncommon that a doctor would use a low dose of this possibly and then also has a mood stabilizer yes well yeah yeah now nowadays there's side effects with this are kind of connected to weight gain and  that's become a real issue you know when dealing with all of these medications so well i am i know i said earlier that i was given well beauty years ago and that was an anti depressant weight loss no smoking like then one of the benefits of people use wellbutrin was they actually had less urges and cravings to smoke nicotine and so those i ban is one of the prove medications for people trying to quit smoking levels to tell if it's in a therapeutic range so there's a way to measure it with a lot of these medications there's no way to measure it you know that it is not like insulin where you can say ok it's in this range and i don't even if you can i mean you know if you can also became a bit of a mood stabilizer but i don't know if you all remember the big like about a year ago or so there was this big settlement because they had kind of gone in and marketed risperdal medication to doctors and label of what off label means is that it's medicine that hasn't been approved to treat this but it very well could treat it and again i think we have to be educated we have to do our homework because i know people that doctors used off label uses of medicine that were life changing but then again you know what maybe not so you got it we really got a kind of become educated about this in fact there's a website i want to say it now and it will make sure people get it needy meds dot org just needy and easy why or meds dot org and if you need patient assistance for mental health physical health but it also has a lot of education information there because it's not pharmaceutical related lockers only use it for that purpose because it's a really old medication but in the day that used to be one of the only medicines people have for depression believe it or not so yeah interest yeah and it just noted then you didn't function some of these medications weren't very good like they were made for one thing and i didn't see them help my patients a whole lot but then i ended up helping other patients with other things you know so all right so how about this  it's a good medicine for short term but not for long term because it creates a dependence so help me let me help you understand the difference between these medicines and this with these medicines what happens with these kinds of medications is you take it you feel it and so it's a media leewood a call mood altering but because it's mood altering it also has a potential for dependence and overuse and so  lithium was the most important one but there's a couple of others and one of them is that i was telling julie about this story of a patient i work with a break is called abilify and you might have seen this in print magazines i don't think i've seen a become so easy no hero but probably in print magazines but again a beautiful interesting lee enough was again developed you know as an anti psychotic but then turned out helping people with other things thank god they were kind of working on these medicines because then we ended up having so many others going along now what's this  and happened is that when a pharmaceutical company gets a patent for medication they get it and honestly i don't know how many years it is is it ten years is it twenty years but then as it starts to go off  pad right so they can't charge the big bucks once it comes off patent that's when they make generics of it or they can so it's kind of like think of it is a sacred recipe here but then other people can have access to the recipe after twenty years or again all do r so what happens is they take the medication and they tweak it a little bit so that then they can extend a new pad or o o b are definitely changed or i don't know if you guys have ever seen medicines that said x r or are so what it is is when they add on seroquel x or extended release so they've come up but now you take it once a day rather than three times a day but it also has a brand new that's kind of where medications become so expensive because they're on patent are and generics are supposed to be cheaper but have paid attention to the loser you know that they aren't necessarily any more did that even generic medicine has in and people will say well that doesn't work for me that doesn't work for me and i guess my point in doing the show is if you know somebody or you yourself have tried this medicine tried this medicine guess what there is a lot of other medications to be talking to your prescribers about and as we said in the last show i am a big believer i love doctors general practitioners that will you know address and assess and you know kind of like monitor for depression but they're not always the best people to treat it and i said if you had the porsche would you take it to the ford dealer and that's because they they both know engines but the porsche mechanic knows the porsche car and gin and the four person knows the ford engine these medications that's what he has for it you know mental health prescribe or whether it's a psychiatrist or a nurse practitioner they do all the studying so they know the intricacies of the medications and so  primary doctors not the best person but i'll be honest with you all all right so i digress a moment so yesterday all heard about the bill that may have passed the house right american health care act and what it does is it kind of cuts eight hundred billion dollars but the other thing about preexisting conditions so i had explained it to go for my why this so important because she said well if it's an insurance plan it's going to cost you more money to help that person you should be able to charge more and i said yes i agree if they weren't getting billions but here's a more important thing at hampton hospital when i was first diagnosed with my depression i left my job but i actually got laid off i was like i love them my own so when i went to my new place guess what happened under my new insurance my depression was a preexisting condition and so i didn't qualify to have my treatment covered so i could no longer see the psychiatry's to prescribing the medication now luckily for me i was stable enough and i kind of explained the situation to my medical doctor and my medical doctor continue to write my scripts for me and i was able to get the medication because medications don't go as preexisting conditions but that's kind of a good example of why that protection  cancer diagnosis yes what that means is if they were in remission and they went anywhere else for a new job they got fired they had to go to a new job if it got exercise they wouldn't pay for treatment for that person and  that i don't think a lot of people and i guess i want to bring it up can i don't think a lot of people understand why it is such a big deal you know and so yeah prescriber that specializes in these medications is really really important and then one last thing i you can find out what's available to help you pay for the medication and it's for all medicines not just mental health but your physical health too and they're that because this sometimes price and money gets in the way be being able to take their  medications and so i want people to know that there's hope because there's these other resources that are out there and what you didn't know is if you did know this it costco costco is the cheapest place to buy medications and you don't have to be a member i was just going to ask you if you want to use your pharmacy you can go in there with your prescription and they will fill your medication now if you're a member you get a little extra bonus so i'll give you an example my dog takes your medicine i got a new medicine prescribed it was a extended release costco told me sixty eight fifty for one month's supply i called another box because i don't want to i don't want to be on a usernames were called other places it just built a pharmacy and asked them two hundred six dollars for the same exact medicine when i said that's you know what here's a guy i don't know pharmacy set the prices of their medications not just so much the company has so you gotta shop around for the best deal so here's what will do will come back when i have to do another show because there's so much we didn't get to talk about but we've come to the end of it so i want to thank my guests because without you too this show would not be doing what it does and i want to invite you to come back because our mission here is to make sure that you have the tools to live well today