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Inappropriate Guilt Over Benzodiazepine Prescription-Reply
Darius Rastegar, MD
Baltimore, Md
Arch Fam Med. 1996;5(1):9.
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In reply
Guilt may be inappropriate, but is concern? My purpose in writing this piece was not to discourage or denigrate the use of benzodiazepines. However, it is hard for me to believe that the anxiety experienced by the patient I described is simply a biochemical disorder (although all human experience is, in a sense, ultimately "biochemical"). Medication too often seems like a simple solution for a complicated problem (that is not to say that we should not use medication if it helps). As Reynolds points out, it may be unrealistic to try and remove the stressors, but we should not ignore or discount them. As physicians, we strive to establish diagnoses in a framework that we can understand and have mastery over. In this case, a diagnosis may hide more than it reveals.
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
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