New generation anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients, research suggests. A University of Hull team concluded the drugs actively help only a small group of the most severely depressed. Marjorie Wallace, head of the mental health charity Sane, said that if these results were confirmed they could be "very disturbing". But the makers of Prozac and Seroxat, two of the commonest anti-depressants, said they disagreed with the findings. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7263494.stm
I would say in most of the school shootings in the US the kids are A. on one or more of these drugs, or B. have stopped taking them shortly before. http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...082&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
I am sure some people are helped. Especially those who do not mind the costs - both in terms of money and emotions and physical side effects. The widespread knee jerk prescription of these drugs, especially when it is to children, is a very sad and poorly thought out phase in medical practice. Imagine giving pain killers to every person who felt pain and then sending them home without seeing what the real causes are, and, when appropriate, as a society, family, community, actually tackling those causes.
I'm on Lithium and Wellbutrin and they work pretty damn good MOST of the time. It sure beats not having them for I wouldn't be here today without them as well as the doctors help.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
there was somthing in the gaudian about this today, and i will ahve to admit that i disagree! i have children on Fluoxetine (prozac) for Bi Polar and ticks!! (and no not the little animals that live under your skin, or in yur hair) and they are doing extreemly well, and when it is time for them to come of the drugs they will be slowly weaned of them and not just stop taken them, because that would lead to problems
Of course the makers of these drugs would disagree. Pharmaceutical companies are the worst drug dealers on the planer! They're not concerned with people getting better, they're concerned with getting as many people as they can to take their meds so they can exploit peoples weakness and get rich off of our low moments. But on the note of "do they work", well, I think that if someone is having severe and long term depression then a combination of meds and talk therapy can definitely be a benefit. I think the meds should be prescribed in the lowest dose possible, and the talk therapy should be as much as possible. Sadly, in our society, they overdose people with meds and have them meet a psychologist maybe a few times, never truly addressing what the underlying problem is. As a result, people end up being on anti depressants for a very long time. I think they work, they are just used wrong. But you know, insurance companies dont want to pay $150 an hour for you to see a therapist, so they bribe everyone involved and co conspire with the pharmaceutical companies to make sure that they can pay for something much cheaper like medication. And the pharmaceutical companies probably give the insurance companies a cut so that they wont allow someone to see a therapist long enough to get well enough to get off meds. Theres my rant!!!
First and foremost we need to differentiate psychotropics from other drugs used for heart disease, diabetes etc. The psychotropics do work especially for severe cases but one has to take into consideration that their effectiveness is limited in time AND the brain makes adjustments so as given time a particular reaction can actually turn into an opposite reaction. Other than that i dont have any answers.
I agree that anti-depressants are bullshit. Sure, in certain extreme circumstances to prevent a person from harming himself or others they're a temporary solution, but strictly temporary. What should be cured is the source of the problem, the reasons why that person has depression in the first place have to be addressed, and psychological therapy should be applied. These drugs are like painkillers to cure a broken leg.
Well a good friend of mine has a brother who cannot function without them. I agree that overuse\over prescribing is bad but for some people they really do help.
Very mild sedative. Increasing Rest is a good think. SSI unhibitors, may need <<< correction, could provide a temp. rela x cycle. So, that when you deJones, your fired up, 'gain. Then, you may try and not ___Experience_ anything that one may consider, shall we say: OFFSETTING.
I think it largely has to do whether the source is a psychological trauma or a chemical disbalance in the brain due to genetics or illness, or smthing like that.
I think the problem is in identifying the patients who are likely to be helped by the drugs, and then MONITORING them closely to see if the hypothesis was correct. Psychiatry/psychotherapy is a very imprecise discipline to start with. And virtually every practitioner will tell you that in order to do as good a job as he would like to and as he believes he could, he would have to spend far more time with the patients than is practical, from both a financial and logistical standpoint. They settle for seeing patients once a week because that's all most insurance plans will cover; wealthy patients think they're really putting themselves out to come in three times a week; but the shrinks would like to see the people once a day or even more than once. There is a lot of bad medicine being practiced: I've seen family practice "specialists" prescribe both Prozac and Trazodone. Those are lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats talking, not doctors, pharmacists or scientists. The problem with America is that lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats run everything because of government rules and regulations and the threat of lawsuits. And that is not an easy thing to find out. The biology of the brain is only dimly understood. Generally the only information doctors have is what the patient tells them. Don't laugh. The reason for the enduring popularity of traditional herbal medicines that have been in use for thousands of years--as opposed to corporate products that were invented so recently that the first generation of users hasn't even died and been autopsied yet--is that quite often THEY WORK.
Which makes the field experimental and hubristic (if such an adjective exists). They also, in distinction from pharmaceuticals, tend not to suppress the immune system.
prozac = sugar pill http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2...h.medicalresearch?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront "When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs. The only exception is in the most severely depressed patients, according to the authors - Prof Irving Kirsch from the department of psychology at Hull University and colleagues in the US and Canada. But that is probably because the placebo stopped working so well, they say, rather than the drugs having worked better."
I have a feeling that in most cases, curing the source of the problem would mean changing the world and making it a better place for people to live. I’m an unhappy person because I hate the current state of humanity, and no amount of antidepressants or psychotherapy is going to change the way I feel. Psychotherapy and antidepressants can help people cope with reality, but they can’t take away a person’s depression.
You just have to change your perception of the world. It's all in your head, we don't perceive objective reality any way.
But they do help contend with depression allot better than without them. I'll say it again , I wouldn't be here today without the aid of the Lithium and Wellbutrin medications so they really do help.
That's a common argument. But the issue is clearly far more complicated than that. Millions of people face the same crappy reality without being depressed and lots of them are downright happy. They've done studies of concentration camp survivors, people who in some cases watched their entire family and all their friends get murdered and spent weeks or months expecting the same to happen to them. Some of them came out with hopeless lifelong depression. Yet others bounced back in an unbelievably short time, went on to do great things, and by every objective and subjective measure ended up happy. So what causes the difference? There are people right now who look at the world and see exactly the same problems and risks you see. They're not blind, deluded or stupid. They really see it all and can describe it articulately. Yet it does not plunge them into depths of depression. Some of them take an activist position and try to do something about it, yet many just live normal lives doing nothing more to ensure the survival of civilization than the rest of us. What causes the difference? If it really just is chemistry, internal wiring, or attitudes you developed before you were even old enough to talk; if it were possible to buffer the chemicals, reroute the wiring, or put the attitudes in a more balanced perspective; if you could become one of those other people who sees the same world and responds rationally yet differently, wouldn't you want to at least try it and see if you like it? One good definition of depression is: inability to cope with reality.
