Psychotropic Drugs and Counseling

Psychotropic Drugs

In most cases, counselors will be working with clients who have been prescribed psychotropic drugs to treat their emotional or behavioral issues. Psychotropic drugs are prescribed by healthcare providers to assist clients deal with issues like anxiety and depression. There are several challenges and advantages of working with a client who is being treated with medication like psychotropic drugs. One of these advantages is that medication has a positive impact on the counseling process since it acts as a support to the process. In this case, the medication and counseling helps the client to focus on symptom relief and self-growth respectively. Secondly, working with such clients helps in ensuring that the counseling process is based on a holistic approach to meet the diverse needs of clients. The third advantage is that working with such clients involves addressing both the mental health issues and psychological concerns facing a client. However, the challenges include the likelihood of the medication to be harmful on the client and probability of the medication to interfere with the client’s emotions during counseling (Good Therapy, 2015).

The increased diagnosis of psychiatric conditions among children has contributed to an increase in prescribing psychiatric/psychotropic drugs to children for their emotional and behavioral issues. However, this practice has generated significant concerns, especially with regards to the long-term effects of such medications on children. While these drugs sometimes help relieve symptoms of behavioral and emotional issues in children, they can have devastating long-term effects on children. In this regard, it’s suitable to prescribe medications to children for treatment of behavioral and emotional issues once necessary conditions for such medications are established. The child’s situation should be critically examined before such medications are prescribed and provided in a manner that prevents long-term effects.
Reference
Good Therapy. (2015, November 24). Psychotropic Medications. Retrieved August 10, 2017, from https://www.goodtherapy.org/drugs/psychotropic-medication.html