Where would you place yourself on the meds--therapy spectrum for treatment of mental illness?

The extremes are all meds and no therapy, or all therapy and no meds. It is my sense that some folks are more biased towards therapeutic techniques, and that meds are used hardly at all, and if they are used, it is kind of a last resort. On the other end, there may be people who feel meds are the gold standard for treatment and that therapy takes a back seat.

Could you identify yourself as a therapist of some kind or a psychiatrist or a person with mental illness or someone with no direct experience in this area? Could you then talk about your thinking about meds and therapy and what balance, on average, you think would be preferable.

For example, some people might feel that it is best if it is all done through therapy. Meds are a crutch, or something. Other people might feel that the problems are all chemically based and therapy is just talk—nice, but not therapeutic.

I’m really curious as to how different people see this. We get a lot of questions of a psychological nature on fluther, and I think I see trends in therapeutic theory for different regulars. I’m just wondering if what I see is just my imagination or if there really are consistent differences between different people’s theories about how to treat mental illness.