Why Patients Miss Therapy and Medication Management Appointments

Discussion
Patients will often miss therapy appointments and medication management appointments for two reasons. The first reason concerns the value assigned to therapy and medication. In some cases, patients might see more positive results after taking medication and conclude that drug therapy is better than psychotherapy. According to Sagar and Sarkar (2020), there are cases when prescribed medication helps resolve a short-term issue, and this can mislead patients to believe that it's the medication that helped. As a result, they might think drug therapy is more effective than psychotherapy. The belief that drug therapy is better than psychotherapy, regardless of how untrue that is, can interfere with the patient's commitment to both medication and psychotherapy. Such patients might adhere more to medication management appointments because they want to keep up with their medication and ensure they take their prescribed drugs properly. However, this might come at the risk of ignoring therapy appointments.
The second reason concerns the time t...