Preface: I'm speaking as someone who is diagnosed with OCD and generalized anxiety disorder, and I will be speaking about my experiences. When my mental health

Preface: I'm speaking as someone who is diagnosed with OCD and generalized anxiety disorder, and I will be speaking about my experiences. When my mental health took a turn for the worse a few years ago, I was strongly encouraged by my therapist to start taking medication. I was admittedly skeptical upon hearing. I had never taken psychiatric medications before as I held many misconceptions of their side effects, and besides, I figured therapy was supposed to "fix me," so why should I need meds? When I inquired as to why they wanted me to become medicated, their response was that patients tend to only reach out for help AFTER their mental health becomes severe enough that "learning to cope without meds" is not an option. When a provider is faced with such a case, they are trained to treat it with as much aggression as reasonably possible in order to prevent the patient from becoming even more despondent. This means medication. From the perspective of the patient, it appears that they're being funneled into taking meds, but from the perspective of the provider they recognize the trajectory the patient is on, and suggest taking drastic actions before things get worse.