Why not try fish oil, zinc and vitamins FIRST? That’s the problem I have with modern medicine. A doctor just reaches for a prescription pad and to heck with the side effects. We’ll just write another prescription for that side effect and on it goes.
In most cases, other approaches have been tried first, but often they just don’t work. It’s well-established that there is strong heritable factor, based on studies of twins and siblings raised apart, and other similar study approaches. There’s a genetic factor, and even if there are also environmental factors (such as chemicals in the diet) that trigger the expression of the genetic problem, that doesn’t mean that changing the environmental factor after the fact will cause the disease to go away or get better.
It’s the same with schizophrenia (I have a schizophrenic half-sister). There’s definitely a genetic component, but strong evidence for a variety of environmental factors too, including prenatal ones. Example: There’s a significant statistical skew in the birth month of schizophrenics in teh Western world (as far as I know, that’s where the bulk of reliable data is from). No one has figured out why, but one theory is that certain common viral infections — maybe even the common cold — are more more prevalent at certain times of year, and that a fetus exposed to one of these infections at a certain point in development will have the genetic factors for schizophrenia triggered. There are people who try to avoid drugs in treating schizophrenia, and the results are ugly — the disease usually progresses faster and further when not treated with drugs, and some unmedicated schizophrenics are prone to sudden bursts of violence, that can result in innocent people get killed or maimed (often by schizophrenics who hadn’t shown violent tendencies before).
What’s so bad about drugs? They should be used when evidence suggests they’ll be helpful. Untreated mental illness is hardly free of ugly side effects, including murder and suicide. Just because drugs don’t always succeed in preventing these things, doesn’t mean they’re dangerous or useless.