Why Do People Take Medications?

From reading this article, I was able to gain a lot of insight of why people may not take their medications as prescribed. From prior knowledge, I would have said that the main reasons are due to not understanding the value of taking the medicine or wanting to avoid side effects. One reason highlighted in the article was the stigma attached with taking certain types of medications. The specific disorder mentioned in the article was epilepsy, but many other diseases are stigmatized such as depression and anxiety. I think it is really sad that people feel this way. It made me really upset to read a woman’s testimony about how her mother didn’t accept her because of being “different”. It’s really hard to understand why a parent would feel that way about their children. …show more content…
When someone is burdened by having to take multiple medications several times a day, it can start to feel like medication is running a person’s life. They begin to feel trapped because they know that if they don’t take the medicine, serious consequences could occur. When someone takes a lot of different medications every day, it can be hard to remember each and every day what to take. I remember at one of the pharmacy organization meetings, a speaker came in to talk about her role in talking with HIV patients. They have a lot of medications to take, and the speaker talked about how she wanted the patients to feel like instead of letting the medications control their lives, they could follow a routine that still allows them to feel like they are in