Psychiatry, like the rest of medicine, divides treating illnesses into two phases.

The acute phase involves the illness as it first presents itself to the clinician. The object of treatment is to get the patient well.

The maintenance phase involves keeping the patient well, which means preventing relapses. Often, what gets a patient well doesn’t necessarily keep him well. At the very least, the treatment strategy needs to be reassessed as the patient enters the maintenance phase.

The meds...