What I mean tbh is other people telling you you shouldn't be taking it. And people telling me my daughter shouldn't be taking it, even though she really wanted medicine having exhausted other options like yoga, mindfulness, books about panic attacks, exercise etc
Some of that is just ignorance, and again, lingering stigma about what it 'means' to be taking psychiatric meds. Some of it is genuine and justified concern about the pharmaceuticals themselves, and the influence of pharma on the medical model.
I think medication for mental health is there to support you and give you a leg up on your journey to recovery. It's not designed to cure you, more to 'calm you down' in order to cure yourself
True for some conditions, but not for others. There are some life-long diagnoses that generally are not manageable without ongoing medication, and for the most part, that means life-long treatment in order to avoid relapse. Sometimes, with certain conditions, some people find that as they age and gain better insight and understanding of their condition and the resultant symptoms, that they can either reduce medication, or sometimes even maintain a stable life without it entirely, but the underlying condition is still there and they are not 'cured'.
Alot of the time mental health issues are caused by distortions in our thinking, which can't really be properly changed by medication
Again, that's only true of certain mental illnesses, typically the ones that can be caused by environmental and lifestyle factors. Those are often ultimately resolved only when there is a change of environment and lifestyle, and that can be made easier or more achievable by medication. There are other conditions that have a physiological root. They are not due to distorted thinking, rather the symptom is disordered thinking, and the primary way to resolve those and keep them under control is invariably medication. The pathology is no different to any other physiological illness in that there is a physical issue that results in undesirable symptoms, only the part of the body negatively affected is the brain.
Personally I believe people put far too much stock in talking therapies and eschew simple medication. There is more and more evidence to suggest things like CBT are pretty much wholly ineffective, because the issues they are typically prescribed for are things that sometimes resolve themselves over time in any case. No wonder, if you are given a two year wait for a talking therapy for recurrent depressive episodes, by the time your therapy comes around you will often be in a totally different mental state, and perhaps have a greater insight to the cause and remedy to your depression. Talking therapy undoubtedly helps some people, but I completely disagree with the assertion that it's a failing to prescribe short courses of Anti-depressants due to a lack of talking therapy, because in the majority of cases the anti-depressants will be far more effective at resolving the symptoms than a talking therapy will in any case, and invariably, the solution to preventing recurrence involves changes to lifestyle and environmental circumstance. The reason GP's hand out mild anti-depressants as a first recourse is because they are by far and away the most effective means of treating common mental health conditions effectively.