If you are chronically stressed because you are working a terrible job, have overwhelming family obligations, etc., that doesn’t necessarily mean you have an “anxiety disorder”.
It might instead be that your anxiety is a perfectly natural response to bad circumstances. To fix the problem it would be better to address the causes of the stress instead of trying to just treat symptoms.
At a societal scale, it would be better to e.g. improve worker protection laws, expand the social safety net, subsidize childcare for working parents, crack down on fraudulent business practices, allow people to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy, make sure skilled immigrant workers can switch employers without losing their immigration status, work to reduce domestic violence, reform the criminal justice system, etc. instead of just expanding access to anxiolytic medication or pretending that therapy alone can solve all problems.
For an individual, the proper response might be to quit a job, start saying “no” to demands to work overtime, break up with an abusive partner, sit down and have a frank conversation with overly demanding parents, declare bankruptcy, take a leave of absence from college, let someone else take over maintaining the open source project, ...
> To fix the problem it would be better to address the causes of the stress instead of trying to just treat symptoms.
The effect of depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental illnesses is that they prevent you from taking steps to address the addressable issues in your life. To start exercising while depressed, to start socializing while suffering from anxiety, etc., are some of the hardest things to do. That’s why medication is typically paired with counseling - the medication prepares you to take the steps the counseling guides you into taking.
To put it another way, anxiety disorders (and depression, and ADHD, and more) take away agency. The purpose of medication is to reintroduce agency. The medication (for most people) won’t fix their problems, but it will help them fix them.
do you think that, in general, medication is successful in improving the agency of it's users?
i worry that medication harbors a reliance on drugs, and facilitates growth of a society in which drug-use is necessary to participate "normally".
if someone with ADD/ADHD has an opportunity to increase their agency, do you think that would increase their quality of life? the parent commenter suggested that mental illness (in the case of depression) might be the result of someone with healthy brain chemistry in a bad environment. but do you think that someone with healthy brain chemistry can demonstrate an attention disorder as a result of their environment, and would be more able to improve their environment through medication?
> i worry that medication harbors a reliance on drugs
It can also get you out of bed when nothing else does. Or prevent you from killing yourself when you otherwise would have. Or give you a push to take small steps to get your life together. All of these effects are valuable despite efficacy being far from 100%, there being side effects and issues with reliance.
Of course lowering your stress level is always a valid response, if possible.
But it is possible to handle even very stressful situations without damaging yourself with anxiety and depression. These are skills you can build up, and are very useful to have.
It might instead be that your anxiety is a perfectly natural response to bad circumstances. To fix the problem it would be better to address the causes of the stress instead of trying to just treat symptoms.
At a societal scale, it would be better to e.g. improve worker protection laws, expand the social safety net, subsidize childcare for working parents, crack down on fraudulent business practices, allow people to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy, make sure skilled immigrant workers can switch employers without losing their immigration status, work to reduce domestic violence, reform the criminal justice system, etc. instead of just expanding access to anxiolytic medication or pretending that therapy alone can solve all problems.
For an individual, the proper response might be to quit a job, start saying “no” to demands to work overtime, break up with an abusive partner, sit down and have a frank conversation with overly demanding parents, declare bankruptcy, take a leave of absence from college, let someone else take over maintaining the open source project, ...