Drug therapy vs talk therapy

Nowadays there really is not enough information about the risks and benefits of different treatments to address the depression, anxiety or another mental health disorders. Some studies have been done about it but it’s not very clear for all the people.

There’s a big discussion about what is better for the wellbeing of a patient with depression or other mental disorder. The majority of the psychologists prescribe drugs to their patients in despite of the damage that this kind of treatment could cause to them. Sometimes the talk therapy can be better than the drug therapy.

Talk therapy can help you learn about your depression and in that way help you find ways to manage your symptoms. It helps you to know the negative thoughts that are affecting your mood in order that you can develop the skills to help handle your depression and make positive changes in your behavior.

Instead of that the drugs therapy that millions of people are taking can cause a serious change of mood in the patient. The number of patients with collateral effects is increasing enormously. The drugs that the patients are taking can produce big changes in their behavior what can almost provoke suicide. On the other hand the talk therapy can produce slow changes that the drugs, but those changes are better, because with it the patient can learn the way to bear with the real world, what he couldn’t do taking drugs. The talk therapy can’t make a big change in the behavior of the patient and if we think about the drugs for the disorder depression, there’s a large-selling category of drugs that are being sold that aren’t regulated, and it’s because of it that the link between antidepressants and suicide rates among children and adolescents is a very serious issue. 

In conclusion the talk therapy is a safer way to address the depression than the drug therapy because although it can take more time to see the effects it’s safer considering that the drug therapy have collateral effects in the body of the patients in so far as the talk therapy doesn’t cause these effects. Talk therapy changes their thought and in that way the learn how to cope with the disorder instead of being medicated all the time.

An interview with Henry Hitchings

We interviewed Henry Hitchings, the specialist in language and cultural history author. Here is what he said:

Do you think that all the languages have the same influence in the world?

No, obviously English is the most influential language, because it’s the lingua franca of business and is mostly used in other areas like medicine, education and diplomacy.

Why do you think that English had spread so much?

The Industrial Revolution and English colonialism were the reasons why English is the most talked language in the world, but now it’s because the technological advances that is the most learned as well.

Do you think that the language is connected to the culture?

Of course I do. Every language is closely connected to the culture and I can give you a very good example of that: If I say to an Australian speaker “you hit that for six,” he or she won’t understand what I am saying. Even Non-native speakers of English say that they prefer to talk with one another than have a conversation with native speakers. I understand that feeling, because it is difficult for them to keep up the conversation of native speakers by having been raised in a different culture.

What do you think about the "invented languages"?

There have been attempts to create a language that the entire world can use, but just Volapük and Esperanto were successful. I think those languages did not prosper because none of them is very likeable, and let’s face it: who would like to learn a language that probably nobody would talk? It’s preferable to stick to the language that you know more people do talk.


We thank to Henry Hitchings for his willingness and time to do this interview. We hope to work with him on another occasion.

New technologies for the benefit of anthropological development

Is known that the development of new technologies helps to the people to improve their way of life, but sometimes it’s not as appreciated as it should be. The development of new technologies is not only used for electrical appliances or information technology as common people could think. Nowadays, new technologies have been developed and put together with the science, all of this at the service of anthropology. There are so many examples of what we are talking about; how technology helps the study of the past and present of the humankind. This with the development of new lab equipment or work tools, but now a newness has been shaken up the scientific world.

One of the most important anthropological discoveries have been done with the help of the software called ‘Google Earth’, which was elemental in the discovery of a new Autralopithecus (Australopithecus sediba). The discovery was done because images of that application were used by the paleontologists of the Witswatersrand University. The images were used in a research that they done in South Africa, and where they found almost 500 caves and deposites with lots of fossils inside. Google Earth is a good tool because with the help of it anthropologists can see images of lands that haven't been explored. In that way this unexplored lands are discovered and the archeologists go there in order to start new researches.

In conclusion we can see how important both technologies and anthropological discoveries are. They together can give us a lot of information about the life of our ancestors, which is essential to understand the modern life, and to respond to some issues that today still without an answer. Anthropology can see itself very benefitted by this kind of developments; that as we could see are not only important on the modern life but also in science.