There is no empirical evidence that the brain of someone diagnosed with bipolar, paranoid, ect has a brain any different than any other brain. There is no way to measure if someone is lacking any specific chemical.
My personal experiece with pyschotropic drugs was very negative as was that of everyone I know.
Noone treated with these poisons gets better......
The RA meds I take are very toxic. They are mostly chemo drugs; they damage the liver, kidneys, and lungs. My liver and lungs have been damaged by them. Plus, I am not cured! I have to remain on them till I die, unless someone figures out a way to turn off the genes that trigger RA.
So why would I take such poisons? Because I can get out of bed and dress myself, groom and feed myself. I can contribute in my church and play with my grandchildren. We won't even get into the pain and deformities the disease causes. And incidently, my RA was a type that showed nothing on blood tests, although I was eventually diagnosed by symptoms.
Someone with serious mental illness is no different than me. Their brain is very sick! And although there is no test for Axis 1 disorders, symptoms can definitely be indicative of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and depression with psychosis. (This is not major depression) There has been a lot of work done with brain imaging, and there are marked differences in the brains of people who suffer from these disorders. This is not personality disorders, which are not truly treatable with medications, or even major depression!
So these people take the meds, and somewhat like RA meds, they try different drugs until they find the drugs that work the best, with the least side effects. (I've gone off 4 RA drugs because of the side effects!) these drugs do a variety of things, including keep them from getting irrationally paranoid, from experiencing audio or visual hallucinations, minimizing the mood swings, helping with suicidal ideation, and finally, minimizing or eliminating psychosis. Things which, like my RA, don't seem to respond to Biblical counselling!
In fact, one of the Christian women experiences terrible paranoia in response to certain end times scenarios. I've been teaching her that much of what she believes is "pop" theology, and not Biblical. When she thinks about it rationally, she thinks I am right, but when her brain is not working properly, she gets paranoid anyway! And if not over that, then something else irrational! This is one person I do take aside and pray for her, and it does give her peace and calms her down. But she, like every other person in the group, accept that they need to be med compliant or end up "in-patient" after a psychotic break.
I'm sorry if you, or someone you know did not respond well to meds. But probably the severity of mental illness was not there. I am also a big believer in natural methods to work in combo with the meds. That includes good sleep hygiene, exercise, keeping a schedule, counselling and certainly prayer and reading the Bible daily. But for my group, at least, the meds are essential, regardless of how toxic they are!