5 Medication Myths New Yorkers Still Believe

New York City is not short on access to good healthcare, yet a striking number of New Yorkers still go without mental health treatment they need. According to a 2025 NYC Health Department report, roughly 945,000 adult New Yorkers, about 14% of the adult population, reported an unmet need for mental health treatment in the past year. Separately, despite depression being one of the leading causes of disability in the city, less than 40% of New Yorkers affected by major depressive disorder actually seek treatment for it. The Health Department’s own report points to stigma as one of the primary barriers, particularly among young adults, men, and immigrant communities.

A lot of that stigma is built on outdated or simply inaccurate ideas about what psychiatric medication actually is and does. At Empire Psychiatry, we hear the same handful of myths on a near-daily basis across our NYC and Long Island offices. Here are the five we correct most often.

Myth 1: “Psychiatric medications are addictive.”

This is probably the single biggest reason people avoid starting treatment, and for most medications, it’s simply not accurate. The majority of psychiatric medications, including SSRIs, SNRIs, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics, are not addictive. They don’t produce cravings, and they don’t cause a “high” the way substances of abuse do.

What can happen is something different: if certain medications, particularly antidepressants, are stopped abruptly rather than tapered, some people experience a temporary reaction called discontinuation syndrome, with symptoms like dizziness, flu-like achiness, or irritability. That’s a physiological adjustment, not addiction, and it’s exactly why we taper medications gradually and under supervision rather than having patients stop cold turkey. A smaller group of medications, like benzodiazepines and stimulants, does carry real dependence potential and gets prescribed with tighter monitoring for that reason. But painting every psychiatric medication with that brush keeps a lot of people from trying treatments that could genuinely help them.

Myth 2: “Once you start, you’re on it for life.”

This one keeps a lot of people from even scheduling that first evaluation, and it’s not how psychiatric treatment actually works for most patients. The American Psychiatric Association generally recommends continuing antidepressant treatment for about four to nine months after symptoms fully resolve, a window called the continuation phase, specifically to reduce the risk of relapse. After that, your provider re-evaluates with you: some people taper off entirely, especially after a single episode, while people with a history of multiple depressive episodes may reasonably choose longer-term maintenance treatment because recurrence risk is higher for them.

The point is, this is an individualized, revisited decision, not a one-way door you walk through once and never leave. If you’re on medication now and no one has discussed a timeline or a plan for reassessment, that’s a conversation worth having with your provider.

Myth 3: “Medication is going to change my personality.”

We hear versions of this constantly: “I don’t want to feel like a different person” or “I don’t want to feel numb to everything.” It’s an understandable fear, and it deserves a real answer rather than a dismissal. Psychiatric medications are not designed to flatten who you are. They’re designed to reduce the intensity of symptoms, like persistent sadness, anxiety, or mood swings, that have been getting in the way of you feeling like yourself in the first place. Most people who respond well to treatment describe feeling more like themselves, not less, once symptoms lift.

That said, this myth persists partly because there’s a kernel of truth buried in it: some people do experience emotional blunting or “flatness” on certain medications, particularly at higher doses. When that happens, it’s a sign the specific medication or dose isn’t the right fit, not evidence that all medication works this way. It’s a solvable problem through dose adjustment or switching medications, which is exactly why ongoing follow-up matters.

Myth 4: “Needing medication means I couldn’t handle it on my own.”

This myth is really about willpower, and it’s one of the more damaging ones because it frames a biological condition as a personal failing. Depression, anxiety, ADHD, and bipolar disorder involve measurable differences in brain chemistry and neural signaling, not a deficit of character or discipline. Nobody tells a person with hypothyroidism or diabetes that needing medication means they didn’t try hard enough. The same logic applies here. Choosing to start medication when your symptoms are significantly affecting your life isn’t giving up on handling things yourself; it’s using an additional tool, alongside therapy, sleep, and lifestyle changes, that gives your brain the support it needs to actually respond to those efforts.

Myth 5: “My friend’s medication worked great, so the same one should work for me.”

This comes up constantly in a city as socially connected as New York, where people compare notes on everything from therapists to psychiatrists to specific prescriptions. But psychiatric medications aren’t universally interchangeable from person to person. Two people with what looks like the same diagnosis on paper can respond very differently to the same SSRI, stimulant, or mood stabilizer, based on differences in genetics, metabolism, co-occurring conditions, other medications they take, and even factors like age and body composition. What worked beautifully for a friend, a coworker, or a family member might do very little for you, or come with side effects they never experienced.

This is exactly why a proper psychiatric evaluation looks at your specific history rather than defaulting to whatever’s trending in conversation, and why finding the right medication sometimes takes more than one attempt. That’s not a failure of the process; it’s the process working as intended.

Getting Past the Myths

New York has no shortage of stress, and stigma shouldn’t be the reason New Yorkers are going without care they need. If any of these myths have been part of what’s held you back, we’d encourage you to treat that hesitation as a question worth asking your provider directly rather than a reason to avoid the conversation altogether. At Empire Psychiatry, we spend real time addressing exactly these concerns before any prescription is written, because an informed patient makes better treatment decisions than an anxious one.