Antidepressants: Marketing triumphs over science.

[Skjie]

As some one who specifically did not believe in the Effexor the Psychologist gave me, even after he explained what it is supposed to, and still found a serious difference in my outlook, there are some people for whom these drugs can help. Same with severe anxiety.

EDIT: Also my job pays for my pills, so it's not even that I'm expecting that because something should be expensive it should be doing something, the pills cost me not a single cent.

[arus2001]

Some people do need medication for their problems, genetic/chemical imbalance etc.

Which I don't doubt. But like with my case, instead of the shrink talking to my parents and offering an outside perspective on my griefs (a big one in the home environment was the unfairness of chore distribution between myself and my sisters), she wanted to drug me. Granted, that wasn't the only issue, but I was just a teenager that was getting bullied at school and had a lackluster home life compared to other kids I knew. I think anyone who WOULDN'T get a little bummed from time to time in such conditions would be the freak.

[Kobus]

i agree that there are some things in which drugs do a lot of good. my mom has lupus (insert house joke) and is on a trial drug that really helps her a lot. but it seems more and more people look to drugs as a crutch first rather than finding a real cure to their issues.

[Stumblingdrunk]

i agree that there are some things in which drugs do a lot of good. my mom has lupus (insert house joke) and is on a trial drug that really helps her a lot. but it seems more and more people look to drugs as a crutch first rather than finding a real cure to their issues.

Lupus is quite a bit off topic. The idea behind treating with drugs early on is that depression can be rather crippling, and the intention is to get the patient on meds in order to enable them to function. Therapy follows, but our culture really doesn't allow people to check out until they get their depression under control, and therapy takes quite some time.

Edit: don't get me wrong, i roll my eyes every time a friend tells me they've walked out of a psychiatrist's office with a prescription after a single visit. I think it's irresponsible, but i understand why its done

[Kobus]

Lupus is quite a bit off topic. The idea behind treating with drugs early on is that depression can be rather crippling, and the intention is to get the patient on meds in order to enable them to function. Therapy follows, but our culture really doesn't allow people to check out until they get their depression under control, and therapy takes quite some time.

true, but what i said earlier could have been read as a blanket statement that all drugs are wastes of time/paydirt for companies. i didn't want to sound like one of those guys that doesn't believe in medicine at all.

[Fistandantilus]

Actual medicine is totally different from anti-depressant and other "mood" type drugs though.

[Solefald]

antidepressants work. the article even says they make the most difference in the most severely depressed patients. i think much of the confusion arises from flaws in how placebo trials are conducted. a lot of trials these days are outsourced to 2nd world countries where research standards are not quite as rigid.

[Fistandantilus]

antidepressants work. the article even says they make the most difference in the most severely depressed patients. i think much of the confusion arises from flaws in how placebo trials are conducted. a lot of trials these days are outsourced to 2nd world countries where research standards are not quite as rigid.

I'm not sure I follow you. First, of course the pills will make the most difference in severely depressed patients since you know... they are the most depressed. You're going to notice the biggest difference easily when looking at someone who started with massive depression. Also, how does poorly executed placebo trials change the results from this article? I mean, the patients must think that they are on the real drug if the placebo's are having such high effectiveness. What is your argument for poor placebo standards relating to this article? Doctors accidentally giving the real drug to placebo patients? I don't see another option that would give these results and also show ineptitude by researchers.

Man I hope I didn't get trolled just now.

[Meresgi]

As someone who's been on about 4 different types of antidepressants...they really don't help. I'm a cynical person, I didn't buy into a pill helping me, but I figured it was worth a try. I did feel a little better, but I also felt rather bland and uncreative. Like I was just motoring about which in turn actually lent to feeling depressed.

The side effects from stopping where something fucking horrible. I had constant shakes, tremors would rack my body and jolt me awake at night. Vertigo was a fun one, I had that for about 2 months after stopping... I couldn't walk straight or I stand for too long w/o feeling sick and dizzy.

I've been off my drug for about 6months now and I STILL have fucking Restless Leg Syndrome, which was a listed side effect for going off the drug...it's gotten to the point where I Have to jog in place for 10mins or do leg lifts for 5mins before I can sit down to watch TV for 30mins.

[Meresgi]

I sure there's cases where there's a chemical imbalance that causes legitimate depression. I just find it fascinating that a placebo can cause the body to achieve homeostasis.

Wasn't there a study recently with some medical condition where people were given sugar pills and told it would help them, and doctors actually documented the body of those patients fixing what was wrong, when told that the pill had no effect the body was shown to just stop what it was doing outright. I think it was a test with Morphine's effects.

[Acturus]

Even cooler than placebo?

Vitamin C and the Marx Brothers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Cousins

The man had a spinal disorder, and according to himself and a number of doctors that watched over him, he beat it with copious amounts of vitamin C and... I kid you not... laughter.

Did a case study of this guy in a college class on Humor in Communication. Here's a blog write up on the story. His case is still debated today, but the power of endorphins as well as the mind in general is incredible.

I've also enjoyed reading The Natural Mind, which at the time, was written prior to the discovery of endorphins, and suggested that the human brain had the capacity to achieve drug-created highs without the use of the drugs themselves, along with a lot of other, similar thoughts related to unlocking the mind. I stumbled on this book while doing research on schizophrenia and medication for it.

[Chun Liroy]

care to back up your bullshit?

The only thing I can think with limited knowledge is that a lot (if not all) of diseases people can have a genetic predisposition to, so I don't see why that couldn't apply to mental statuses. (Though I agree, I hate psychiatrists, that profession is so full of bullshit imo).

[Ziero]

I sure there's cases where there's a chemical imbalance that causes legitimate depression. I just find it fascinating that a placebo can cause the body to achieve homeostasis.

Some people do need medication for their problems, genetic/chemical imbalance etc.

The article clearly states that the concept of "chemical imbalance" is questionable at best and based purely around speculations created in the 1950s. Going so far as to illustrate two documented pills where one increases serotonin while another decreases it, yet both have similar effects in the end. While it may be true that chemical imbalances in the brain may indeed cause mental disorders like depression, it's really not proven that the pills people take actually help balance things out.

The only thing I can think with limited knowledge is that a lot (if not all) of diseases people can have a genetic predisposition to, so I don't see why that couldn't apply to mental statuses. (Though I agree, I hate psychiatrists, that profession is so full of bullshit imo).

I doubt the crazies are a specifically genetic issue, but they can certainly be inherited from parents and families. All the friends I know who are on anti-depressants or at any time took them have families and upbringings that clearly affected them negatively. Mainly because they had parents/caretakers who are, themselves, f'd up in the head. And chances are those people had some messed up lives as well, so in the end it just becomes an endless cycle of people having messed up childhoods, growing up, having kids and then messing up their childhoods. Rinse, repeat and pretty soon you get a family tree full of whack-jobs.

Mental disorders are most often caused by the nurture aspect of growing up rather then the nature part. For as strong and resilient as the human mind is, it's also very weak and feeble at times. A strong mind can do great and incredible things, but a weak mind will just fumble, stutter and fail itself constantly.

[Tyche]

While it may be true that chemical imbalances in the brain may indeed cause mental disorders like depression, it's really not proven that the pills people take actually help balance things out.

I think that's what I said, right?

[MarkM.]

Most doctors that have half a brain will tell you the best solution is drugs + counseling for treating depression.

[Alleya]

This just in: drugs doing what they say they will do = fraud!

I have news for you people. When your doctor checks out your flu or your broken ankle, they're fucking lying through their teeth to you about your outlook. Why? Because belief, positivity, and personal attention have been a huge factor in what makes all of modern medicine effective. This isn't limited to antidepressants or psychological treatment.

But I don't see any threads of people howling at the moon about fraudulent doctors because a good deal of their effectiveness comes from the placebo effects of someone in authority saying you're going to be OK if you do X Y Z. It's incredible to me how much of a stigma still exists around psychological treatment, lurking beneath the surface until something easy to misinterpret- like this article- comes along and gives people a convenient punching bag.

[Acturus]

This just in: drugs doing what they say they will do = fraud!

I have news for you people. When your doctor checks out your flu or your broken ankle, they're fucking lying through their teeth to you about your outlook. Why? Because belief, positivity, and personal attention have been a huge factor in what makes all of modern medicine effective. This isn't limited to antidepressants or psychological treatment.

But I don't see any threads of people howling at the moon about fraudulent doctors because a good deal of their effectiveness comes from the placebo effects of someone in authority saying you're going to be OK if you do X Y Z. It's incredible to me how much of a stigma still exists around psychological treatment, lurking beneath the surface until something easy to misinterpret- like this article- comes along and gives people a convenient punching bag.

If I break my ankle, the doctor is going to put it in a splint or cast, and tell me I have 6-8 weeks of recovery, followed by some physical therapy to help the atrophied muscles. Regardless of how positive and shiney-happy-people the doctor is, that is the recovery for a broken ankle.

If I have mild depression, I am basically at the mercy of the Psychiatrist and Psychologist team diagnosing and treating me, usually with medications that are not guaranteed to be as effective for my brain as a cast is for my ankle.

It's most certainly not the same in common-place situations.

Yes, if we're talking cancer with a 50% terminal rate, then hell yeah, I want my doctors to shower me with positivity. But positivity or no positivity, the Chemo will still have a physical effect on my body in battling the disease.

But mental medicine does not have the same metrics and quantifications that physical medicine does. It's not an apples to apples comparison by any means.

[Callisto]

I've always been skeptical of anti-depressants, especially since lots of them have stuff like 'explosive diarrhea' as a side effect. Maybe it's just me(I suffer from pretty heavy depression myself, not the emo-boohoo-woe is me shit, but just struggles with severe apathy/fucked up sleeping and eating habits, etc), but if I'm already heavily depressed, one of the few things that would possibly push me over the edge and lead to me offing myself would be shitting my pants in the middle of my work day.

[Zalius]

im going to call the weed patrol and have this thread commandeered

[Weeks]

I would love to be the dissenting voice in this thread, but the fact is that we treat what was once considered within the range of normal moods, antidepressants are not as effective as anyone would like (Though a third again better than a pretty potent placebo effect in these studies isn't as bad as it's made to sound here), and the biochemical basis of depression isn't scientifically supported.

On the other hand, SSRIs are very benign medications outside of the increased risk of suicide when you start taking them, which seems to be easily avoidable for most patients.