>>133881>i don't think that is wise.But taking a random medication, despite having no idea what your "problem" is, or how that medication will ultimately affect your body, since you have no medical or psycho-therapeutic know-how whatsoever, is?
>doctors will either prescribe you a pill, prescribe you a surgery or some kind of therapyYou realize you don't actually have to do whatever it is the doctor recommends you to do if you disagree with him, right? The point is just to get a basic idea of what the problem actually is, from a person that has a professional understanding of the human body / mind / hormones / psyche. And even then you can still disagree with the doctors results, if you have reasons to do so, but it will almost certainly give you some degree of insight or at least perspective on what's wrong with you, some degree of information that you can use to evaluate the problem. Again, my point is that identifying what it is that is causing you anguish is the number one priority, once you know what the problem is, you can choose how to deal with it as you see fit (be it with medication, therapy, taking a different approach to life, etc).
>what if there isn't a problem? what if what appears as a psychological problem is completely reasonable behavior given the situation.Then your therapist / doctor will tell you as much. And even if they try to ""sell you on being mentally ill"" because they are ""greedy and in cahoots with big pharma"" (I'm not american, so I don't know in how far these sorts of claims are based in reality or if they're just a popular superstition. I can say for certain that it's untrue for my european home country) you can just tell them no (but I've already explained this concept of getting a 2nd opinion and then still making your own decisions beforehand). But this is irrelevant to the OP regardless, because the OP already identified there being a problem with her life. As long as the OP feels there is a problem, there is a problem with how she feels. Technically she could "get rid of the problem" by ceasing to view it as such: she could just "stop caring". However, as she has described "making the lives of those around her way worse" due to what she perceives as a problem, stopping to treat it as a problem would entail an abandonment of empathy and sympathy for those who are close to her, which would in itself likely create a new problem for her (unless she's a psychopath). Also you can't really choose to just "stop caring" about something anyways, it requires some degree of influence from the outside (such as new insights). Trying to "fix" the problem would not only cease the anguish for her, but also those around her (at least the anguish caused by OP), whereas stopping to care about it would stop her anguish only.
>what i believe to be a way better approach is to build a model of mental health. what is mentally healthy? how to achieve mental health? You can do that and still visit a doctor to get his opinion though? And really this "approach" just takes you back to the beginning. The OP is already asking these questions. One could answer these questions by pumping yourself full of medicine too, so I don't know why you're presenting this as an alternate approach to medication / therapy, when it's just a prior step that can lead to those things too. Asking these questions is basically the grounds for identifying that there exists a problem with your mental health (which, again, the OP has already demonstrated as being aware of), but it does not help you with identifying what the problem exactly is or how to fix it by itself (as the OP once again demonstrates). Basically this is unhelpful, meaningless advice in the context of the OP.
>any respectable doctor would spend most of his time advocating prevention. an approach like that i expect to automatically fill any gaps if there are any.You can't "prevent" genuine mental illness just by "thinking different" or whatever it is you're trying to say. Someone with schizophrenia can't "prevent" hearing voices and having a psychotic break by "making a model of mental health in his mind". All your advice only works if you're just suffering from some sort of "seasonal depressive mood" or "temporary negative mood swing". Seeing as we haven't remotely identified the severity of OPs mental problems, this is again unhelpful advice.
Again, here's what to do:
>identify / evaluate the problem (research symptoms, get doctors / therapists opinion, etc)>identify / evaluate your treatment options>choose your form of treatment (this can include "doing / changing nothing" or "learning to stop viewing it as a problem and not changing anything about your behavior")>evaluate how well your chosen treatment is working for you (stop it / do something else if you are unhappy with it)>???>profit 
