Antidepressant drugs may not be best treatment

[Locutus]

For the past 25 years, people suffering from depression have been treated with antidepressant drugs like Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil — three of the world’s best-selling selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. But people are questioning whether these drugs are the appropriate treatment for depression, and if they could even be causing harm.

The drugs are designed to address a chemical imbalance in the brain and thereby relieve the symptoms of depression. In this case, it’s a shortage of serotonin that antidepressants work to correct.

In fact, there are pharmaceutical treatments targeting chemical imbalances for just about every form of mental illness, from schizophrenia to ADHD, and a raft of anxiety disorders. Hundreds of millions of prescriptions are written for antipsychotic, antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications every year in the United States alone, producing billions of dollars in revenue for pharmaceutical companies.


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Antidepressant drugs may not be best treatment: Robert Whitaker - Health - CBC News

 

[WLDB]

You don't say.

 

[Sal]

interesting article

there was a former member who used to post about this all of the time...we all shouted them down...

there are some statements in this article which are highly disturbing: In fact, Ronald Pies, a psychiatrist and the former editor of The Psychiatric Times, refers to the chemical imbalance hypothesis as an “urban legend” that well-informed psychiatrists never bought into.

so why aren't psychiatrists speaking out?
I know part of it is always what are people willing and ready to accept.

Freud and his findings and subsequent silence on incest (which had a lot to do with the rift between him and Jung) is such an example of what the public can and are willing to accept and understand.

“One of the worries,” said Whitaker, “is that if you’re on these medications long enough, when you come off, will your brain re-normalize? And that’s an open question now.
“What is quite clear is that the drug alone rarely leads to long-term recovery.”

and so, where do we go from here?

 

[B00Mer]

I took Antidepressant drugs once when I lived in Vancouver, you can go for hours on that stuff in the bedroom.

I was cured when I left Vancouver, crossed the border for Texas and tossed the bottle out the window. Never felt better... Vancouver is depressing.

 

[Praxius]

Well I was put on some for a year a while back.


Didn't care for the stuff personally and the random headaches and requirement to take them almost religiously at the same time every day, plus being an additional cost out of my pocket for what I felt was not really that much of an improvement, just didn't seem like a real solution.


It's alright for the short term, but I ended up being just as depressed but for different reasons which were being on them.


I eventually came to the conclusion that to really fix my personal problems I first need to identity what caused them in the first place in my life and fix them.


I realized that I was being affected by the relationship I was in, the so-called friends I had at the time and my job and a few other things.


I got a better job, broke up the relationship, stopped talking to the people I thought were my friends but only brought high school drama BS into my life and I then started to feel a hell of a lot better to the point I didn't need the Anti-Depressants anymore and gradually stopped taking them.


Growing up in the 80's, Depression was an emotion, not a mental illness, or so I was raised to believe.


Because of that, my first instinct after the first few months was that I don't want to be taking these pills for the rest of my life and they don't solve the problems that put me on them in the first place.


You begin to no longer care if something goes wrong, your personality changes to something artificial and while some may feel taking the easy way out of your problems works for them compared to facing the problems and making tough life changing decisions, You're not taking charge of your life and you'll eventually become dependent on the pills.


It seems that no matter what, unless you're a smiling mindless sheep, you have a mental illness or a chemical imbalance in your brain and should require a pill to not feel upset, worried, angry, frustrated, etc.


Mental Health and pills for your head for the most part are like Apple/Mac. A small % of people genuinely benefit from them, however everybody else is told there's something wrong with them and regardless of the problem, there's a pill for that.... Just as there's an App for just about anything.


Before all this crap, people who were depressed, worried a lot, had certain anxieties and the sort were normal humans like the rest of us, but with just a different personality or quirk.


Now they have a mental illness and should take a chill pill so they can "fit in" to society's expectations and be accepted.... Which in itself is a form of messing with one's head and making them more depressed because they're not "normal" and have something wrong with them.

Everything in our brains becomes a chemical imbalance at some point. From a really bad day, breakup, losing your job, eating certain foods, listening to certain music, all affect how our brains work and thus, the chemical reactions will change and may not be balanced.

 

[55Mercury]

The one natural drug that has never been proven to harm anything and would likely keep the majority of psychopaths from even considering snapping, killing cops, etc., and they make it illegal. Stupid fvckheads. Why do we still hold to this useless law that was instituted by people who are no longer around?

I reiterate: I pledge my vote for life to the party that legalizes marijuana.

The world has already gone to hell on every other front.

 

[Sal]

Well I was put on some for a year a while back.


Didn't care for the stuff personally and the random headaches and requirement to take them almost religiously at the same time every day, plus being an additional cost out of my pocket for what I felt was not really that much of an improvement, just didn't seem like a real solution.


It's alright for the short term, but I ended up being just as depressed but for different reasons which were being on them.


I eventually came to the conclusion that to really fix my personal problems I first need to identity what caused them in the first place in my life and fix them.


I realized that I was being affected by the relationship I was in, the so-called friends I had at the time and my job and a few other things.


I got a better job, broke up the relationship, stopped talking to the people I thought were my friends but only brought high school drama BS into my life and I then started to feel a hell of a lot better to the point I didn't need the Anti-Depressants anymore and gradually stopped taking them.


Growing up in the 80's, Depression was an emotion, not a mental illness, or so I was raised to believe.


Because of that, my first instinct after the first few months was that I don't want to be taking these pills for the rest of my life and they don't solve the problems that put me on them in the first place.


You begin to no longer care if something goes wrong, your personality changes to something artificial and while some may feel taking the easy way out of your problems works for them compared to facing the problems and making tough life changing decisions, You're not taking charge of your life and you'll eventually become dependent on the pills.


It seems that no matter what, unless you're a smiling mindless sheep, you have a mental illness or a chemical imbalance in your brain and should require a pill to not feel upset, worried, angry, frustrated, etc.


Mental Health and pills for your head for the most part are like Apple/Mac. A small % of people genuinely benefit from them, however everybody else is told there's something wrong with them and regardless of the problem, there's a pill for that.... Just as there's an App for just about anything.


Before all this crap, people who were depressed, worried a lot, had certain anxieties and the sort were normal humans like the rest of us, but with just a different personality or quirk.


Now they have a mental illness and should take a chill pill so they can "fit in" to society's expectations and be accepted.... Which in itself is a form of messing with one's head and making them more depressed because they're not "normal" and have something wrong with them.

Everything in our brains becomes a chemical imbalance at some point. From a really bad day, breakup, losing your job, eating certain foods, listening to certain music, all affect how our brains work and thus, the chemical reactions will change and may not be balanced.

glad you were able to get things back on track, takes a lot of hard work and determination

I have a friend who was diagnosed as Bipolar but not until his 50's. He held down a good job but was always emotionally distant and wound tight. He finished his first marriage off because his wife couldn't take the lack of emotion after years, then blew through another marriage in which he spent almost his last cent on a ring and other frivolity while in a manic episode and is now in a third marriage which is working well. He committed himself for quite a few months.

The hardest part for him after leveling out and being assisted to face his problems rather than bury them was when his psychiatrist told him the pills would help 20% the other 80% was up to him and how he handled day to day living and life events. He didn't like it, but after 8 years of level...it works for him.