CMV: I believe that the most effective way to help kids with mental health issues is to improve their relationship with their parents rather than drug them up.

I am a licensed therapist working with kids and teens. According to research, the most effective way to help them is to improve their relationship with their parents/guardians. But the common way that medical professionals and psychologists deal with that issue is to use medication.<br>People are always afraid of relationship-focused therapy because the term "parenting fault" or "bad parents" come to mind as they think that their parenting style is the cause of the problems. But I truly don't think that they are at fault. But we cannot deny the fact that the majority of kids with mental health issues have strained relationships with their family. I want to acknowledge that there are kids being abused or have a negligent upbringing that only the removal of the kids from their family is the right thing to do. But the majority of them are not like that.<br>The reason why this issue is common is that modern parents lack the play skills to be a good therapist to help kids with mental health issues. While the research says that relationship-focused therapy is the best way to treat it.<br>Apparently, research also says that parents don't need to have a strong relationship with their kids. But they must know how to play with them. They can be good playmates or play therapists without having the perfect parent-child bond. But I can see in both research and practice that modern kids prefer playing with their parents rather than toys in a playroom, not to mention I have a lot of experience in public mental health services, seeing kids with mental health issues who don't need therapy at all as their conditions can be improved by better parenting from their parents.<br>Moreover, the research is crystal clear that kids with mental health issues who receive family therapy have better outcomes than those who receive individual therapy. But it is undeniable that the most effective form of individual therapy is play therapy. So, family therapy with a play-based approach will be the ultimate treatment. I don't think that a lot of people know that research has proven how effective that therapy is since 2001. But we still have not seen much implementation in both clinical practices and community-based mental health services. It was not until 2020 that I saw the first paper about an evidence-based play-based family therapy. But I don't have a lot of experience with that. Despite that, I still believe in its effectiveness since I have a good experience with play-based therapy for kids with mental health issues. I am not saying that I don't believe in the effectiveness of drugs. But I think that drugs are used as the treatment of choice because they are easy to administer. They work quickly compared to talk therapy that can take months to years to see some effect. But kids are supposed to change over time as they are developing in both physically and mentally. I am not saying that drugs don't have long-term effects. I am saying that talk therapy can work without side effects. I use talk therapy for my clients and most of them have seen an improvement without me giving them drugs. I am not saying that drug therapy doesn't have a place. I am saying that we should not just give kids drugs without trying to improve their relationship with their parents. We can still use drugs at the same time. But it seems like the common practice that talk therapy comes second to drug therapy.<br>I am not an enemy of drugs. But I am an enemy of the overuse/misuse of drugs. I want kids with mental health issues to receive proper treatment and therapy. But I don't want kids without mental health issues to take drugs inappropriately. But we cannot deny the fact that overuse and misuse of drugs to treat mental health issues are real. I had a case where a 10-year-old girl was taken to the hospital because she took all her anxiety medication at once that was prescribed by her psychiatrist. And I have seen the paper stating that the trend in the US and the UK is that kids with anxiety issues are prescribed more drugs from year to year. But they don't have more anxiety problems from year to year. This is probably the reason why they will continue to eat drugs until they OD as in the case I have seen. If they have more anxiety problems from year to year, then they would need more drugs. But they don't. This is an obvious sign of misuse of drugs. I really don't understand why kids who don't have more mental health problems from year to year need more drugs from year to year. Why would we keep giving kids more drugs knowing that they will only eat more drugs?<br>Just so you know that I don't hate drugs. Drug therapy is the best approach when it comes to psychotic disorders. You can talk to someone with psychosis all day long and they will not get better. I have worked with a lot of clients with psychosis. Drug therapy is the best. I am not saying that it is a cure-all. But it is better than talk therapy. But other mental health issues do not require drugs. Talk therapy can help and improve the relationship between kids and their parents as well.<br>Please change my view.