Psychiatric medication side effects What unique biases or stigmas may relate to this lived experience? What is the nature of the potential biases or stigmas? Medications to treat behavioral health challenges have existed since the 1950s. Today, medications to treat depression, anxiety, and attention challenges are commonplace with millions of prescriptions filled annually. Recent pharmaceutical research and development efforts have attempted to target more specific neurochemistry and other biological markers presumed to cause behavioral health challenges. In a statement prior to the publication of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 (May 2013), Dr. David Kupfer noted that, “The promise of the science of mental disorders is great. In the future, we hope to be able to identify disorders using biological and genetic markers that provide precise diagnoses that can be delivered with complete reliability and validity. Yet this promise, which we have anticipated since the 1970s, remains disappointingly distant. We have been telling patients for several decades that we are waiting for biomarkers. We’re still waiting.” What can go wrong through not challenging or addressing our potential biases? What are the negative impacts on peers? • Inadvertently projecting our lived experiences onto peers can create listening roadblocks and lead to unintentional advising. • When those prescribing medications do not provide full information or context when prescribing, it leads to a lack of informed consent options for peers. • Taking medication for behavioral health challenges may result in significant harm for people. What can be done? What does this mean for certified peer specialists? • The role of a certified peer specialist is to validate a peer’s experience with medications and be ready to explore any ambivalence that might arise, always centering the peer’s personal agency and remaining mindful of one’s own bias. • Certified peer specialists will be educated about the risks and side effects of medications. The following is a selected list of side effects from commonly prescribed types of medications: nausea, diarrhea, sexual dysfunction, insomnia, fatigue (antidepressants); drowsiness, impaired coordination, memory impairment, dry mouth (antianxiety); loss of appetite, sleep problems, and mood swings (stimulants); dry mouth, blurred vision, constipation, dizziness, lightheadedness, weight gain, problems sleeping, extreme tiredness and weakness, and (more rare) tardive dyskinesia characterized by involuntary movements in the mouth, lips, tongue, and extremities (atypical antipsychotics).
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