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Statements like this need to be worded very carefully. In many people's minds, saying something like "most people don't need antidepressants" quickly becomes "a

Statements like this need to be worded very carefully. In many people's minds, saying something like "most people don't need antidepressants" quickly becomes "antidepressants are useless". Many people who may benefit from them get scared away. Speaking as someone who has been on/off antidepressants for GAD+OCD for the better part of a decade, I've had countless people tell me that antidepressants are useless and just placebo pills pushed by Big Pharma. But for me, they are life changing. They turn me from someone who just sits indoors having panic attacks all day to someone who can live a relatively normal life. I've tried (and continue to have) therapy, but SSRIs are wonder drugs for myself and many other people. The caveat is, you often need to try 2 or 3 different SSRIs before you find one that works for you, and if you're unlucky, you may not find one, or the side effects can be intolerable. For me, I tried fluoxetine and citalopram, neither of which really worked, but sertraline changed everything almost overnight. The only side effect I've experienced is weight gain, which isn't great, but is better than the alternative. However, this is the UK which may have a different attitude to the drugs. Before and during initial treatment, I was provided with around 20 behavioural therapy sessions, and even now I still have quarterly drug reviews with a doctor. At no point did I feel like I was being pushed onto SSRIs, and they checked to make sure it wasn't something environmental that could be easily remedied before asking if I would like to consider medication.

aa-jv 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  > Be careful what you pimp These aren't drugs you can just ask for (in the UK) at least and the parent wasn't "pimping". Undermining someone's account of their positive experience using therapeutic drugs because of your own bias shows an astounding lack of compassion.. Getting help, help that often involves therapeutic drugs to bootstrap other life changes _is_ taking responsibility. Your comment neatly sums up the toxic attitude of "I don't understand it so it must be bad". Put your ego aside and listen to people living with seriously debilitating neurological issues that you fortunately do not.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    Breaking cycles or bootstrapping changes for those too overwhelmed with depression or anxiety to make lige changes are the ideal uses for the drugs. And then you are supposed to get weaned off them until the next spiral, and then ise rhem to shorten that one too. But in the US plenty of doctors seem to treat simply asking for these drugs as the requisite symptoms for diagnosis. Andany people I care about were diagnosed with chronic depression or anxiety as early teens when all sorts of things are happening. Decades later they still take them and who can say now if they ever needed them, but they certainly do now. It is the normal state for their brains and any attempt to wean would require those complex feedback loops to rebalance. Continuous use isn't always bad either, but im the US we don't always try other options first, and if the mess work they almost never encourage you to stop, because if you hurt yourself that is a liability for them, but if you are a robot with no strong feelings about anything that eats cake, watches circuses and goes to work, then at least that is something.
    - aa-jv 4y ago
      Too many people take these drugs just so that they don't have to take responsibility for their own lives. And that is the cause of a lot of ruin around the world - not just in the US.
  - aa-jv 4y ago
    On the contrary - there is now much evidence these drugs do not work as effectively as the glowing reviews state. There is also much evidence that they are being over-prescribed, for profit. So it is just as toxic to say "these drugs are awesome and you should try them in spite of all of this talk about them being ineffective, addictive, and being sold for massive profit" in that context.
- ykonstant 4y ago
  Your comment is execrable.
  - aa-jv 4y ago
    So is the conclusion that these drugs are worth the side effects, expense, and significant addiction - just because someone on the Internet had a good time on them.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      These drugs do not give you a "good" time, they can at best give you a more normal one.
      - aa-jv 4y ago
        "normal" or "good", either way you become a "culturally acceptable" drug addict who must purchase a prescription for a drug made specifically for the purpose of creating a market of addicts.
        fragmede 4y ago
        Well yeah it's "culturally acceptable" because of they low abuse potential, which is to say there are real actual differences that go into making it culturally acceptable. No one is crushing up their SSRIs and snorting them and going in to sex work to pay for the habit the same way heroin users do, because, well it's not a drug addiction as recognized by the psychiatric industry.
        aa-jv 4y ago
        >psychiatric industry The same people reaping massive profits are telling you whether or not you should think of these drugs as 'normal' or not. Nothing is normal about a lifetime addiction - whether the high you get is a party high, or a "I am feeling normal, where normal has been defined for me by a high priest who actually happens to also be my pimp" ..
- cameronh90 4y ago
  I believe I was quite careful in what I said rather than pimping antidepressants. Each time I start a course of antidepressants, I am genuinely worried what the outcome will be. Messing with your brain chemistry isn't something to do lightly. But equally, for many people, possibly including myself, it quite literally saves their life. However, I must take umbrage at your characterisation of how considering a course of these drugs is akin to taking on a lifetime addiction. They do cause withdrawal/discontinuation effects if you stop suddenly, and often tapering isn't particularly pleasant either. This is something that users of these drugs have known for a long time, likely since they first hit the market, but it took a surprisingly long time for the medical industry to accept this and list it on patient information leaflets. I also certainly accept that many doctors are quite terrible at discussing potential side effects and discontinuation syndrome with patients. This doesn't just concern antidepressants or even heavily marketed drugs. Common, generic, 50+ year old antibiotics can have really horrific side effects that aren't often mentioned by your doctor. This is a serious informed consent issue that needs addressing more widely within the medical field. However, these drugs are not heroin. They are, for most people, relatively easy (albeit sometimes unpleasant) to taper. They don't cause the same kind of pleasure/punishment cycle that makes substances like cocaine or heroin so hard to quit. You don't become a fiend when you miss a dose, you just feel shitty and get some brain zaps. Nobody's holding up gas stations to get some dollars to pay for their Prozac. If you do discontinue antidepressants, your life is typically better for having taken them compared to when you started, and for the most part, you can take these drugs for your entire life without significant adverse consequences.
  - aa-jv 4y ago
    These drugs ruin lives just as efficiently as they 'improve' them. Be very, very careful if you are going to advise people that they should overlook the evidence of this fact, "because they're great for me so you should try them too!". Yes, you are pimping these drugs in so doing.
    - cameronh90 4y ago
      It's very rare that these drugs ruin someone's life. For the most part, if they don't work for you, you just stop taking them and try something else instead without any long term side consequences. There is the very well known risk of suicide in adolescents in particular, which is printed in a black box warning on all of these drugs. This potential side effect usually very early on in the treatment, and usually occurs in people who already had suicidal tendencies. Discontinuing the drug immediately typically resolves this. Responsible doctors will weigh up this risk and ensure that everything is done to make this less likely. Other things are like sexual side effects can persist for some time after discontinuation, but nearly always resolve eventually. Serotonin syndrome is another risk but the chance of that is fairly low unless you take other serotonin-affecting drugs. Should these risks be weighed up when considering treatment? Absolutely. Does that make the drugs harmful overall? Absolutely not. Look at some of the people who've experienced permanent nerve damage as a result of quinolone antibiotics - yet they are still on the market because sometimes there is no alternative besides death.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Are diabetics "addicted" to insulin? > Taking a pill means not taking responsibility I think this nonsense deserves some psychoanalysis of itself, as well as acknowledging that brain chemistry does matter for various sorts of mental illness.
  - aa-jv 4y ago
    Insulin is not the same as prozac, yo. One is designed to get you high so you can deal with your life in a "socially acceptable manner" - the other one helps blood sugar enter the body's cells so it can be used for energy. One is a social crutch - the other, vital medicine.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      > One is designed to get you high This is wrong. I'll flag this thread for removal.
      - aa-jv 4y ago
        Its not wrong, it is factually correct. Mind-altering substances get you high... these pharmaceuticals are merely socially-acceptable high-producing mind-altering substances where - guess what - the science is not final on what they are doing to human beings.
tecleandor 4y ago
For what we've been reading this last years, it's not like antidepressants are worthless, it's like antidepressants aren't doing what we think are doing. The "depression is lack of serotonin" theories seem to have less and less base every day, but SSRIs don't only act on serotonin (just review their side effects). I've done, mostly, vortioxetine and sertraline. For some of us, some SSRIs or SNRIs work. Some don't. Probably it's not because of the serotonin. They have weirdly different effects depending on the person. But there's something going on that we still don't understand. Both because we don't understand the whole mechanism of depression, nor WTF the SSRIs and SNRIs are doing in our mind and body. At least in my humble opinion.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  Depression, OCD, GAD, ADHD and most other neurological issues stem from complex feedback loops and deficiency in neurotransmitter systems. They're labels applied to symptoms, not causes. Like any complex system with feedback loops, sometimes intervention in the loop causes it to rebalance. Sometimes the loop break is an intervention in serotonin, sometimes dopamine, sometimes GABA. There is never a silver bullet. But there are bullets that make life manageable enough to break cyclic issues.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  I completely agree. I believe we have no idea how these drugs work at the moment. For one, serotonin receptors are _everywhere_, notably the gut, which also has a strong relationship with emotional state. And as you point out, they don't just affect serotonin. Given we have a whole bunch of drugs that attempt to be serotonin selective, but where each one affects different people in different ways, it seems likely to me that the non-serotonin effects are likely significant. Plus, what's the reason so many of us are anxious, depressed, neurotic, autistic, ADHD, etc. without obvious cause? Why would a huge chunk of the population have a imbalance of brain chemicals? Ultimately I suspect my GAD/OCD is probably environmental, but environmental in a way that I can't easily identify or fix. Maybe it's the unnatural desk job oriented lifestyle I have, or maybe it's plastics in my blood, processed foods, lack of religion, social media or something else. Or maybe the neurotransmitters just sometimes need a kick up the arse to get them back into proper functioning. All I really know is sertraline helps me live a normal life, and for that I'm thankful.
JoeBtfsplk 4y ago
+1 for sertraline. One caveat is that you should ideally use them to get out of a funk and then discontinue if possible. At all times get a psych you who trust.
Fradow 4y ago
Another +1 for Sertraline. It worked wonder for me after 2 years of depression (classified as mild to severe using some clinical test). I've been taking it for 4 months, and since my life has gotten back to normal my doctor has advised tapering off of it, starting today. We'll see how it goes. I thought it was standard procedure to advise trying tapering off if your life got back to normal, and see how it goes (at least that's how my doctor presented it). I guess that's not a worldwide standard though.
Bellamy 4y ago
That's right, you are among the 0-15% SSRI's help. For the rest 85-100% of people they help as much as a sugar pill.
twawaaay 4y ago
> Statements like this need to be worded very carefully. In many people's minds, saying something like "most people don't need antidepressants" quickly becomes "antidepressants are useless". The statement is factually true and worded correctly.
- creata 4y ago
  But that's not enough. You have to give at least a little consideration to how your audience will interpret your words.
mrweasel 4y ago
> Statements like this need to be worded very carefully. I had a whole thing typed up, but deleted it, because I really only had one question: How would you word it differently? To me it seems a carefully worded as possible, while still alerting to the fact that a class of drugs with terrible side effects are being massively overprescribed.
welshwelsh 4y ago
>But for me, they are life changing This is not something you can claim. How could you possibly know that the SSRI is responsible for your recovery? I'm not going to say that antidepressants are useless, but it is important to understand how placebo works. The key point is that placebo works and it is impossible for an individual to distinguish between a placebo and a life changing drug. In antidepressant studies, SSRIs often outperform placebo to a degree. However, the placebo group has an excellent recovery rate! That means there are people who are clinically depressed, suicidal etc. who are then given a sugar pill as part of a study and make a full recovery. >You often need to try 2 or 3 different SSRIs That makes it even murkier. SSRIs take a long time to work, and if you try several of them that's going to take months to years. There's a high probability that in that time, you might naturally recover. You have the combined benefit of placebo and waiting in addition to the effects of the SSRI. You tried 2 SSRIs that didn't work. What makes you so confident that it was the third? Again, I'm not saying SSRIs are useless. But it's important that we rely on controlled studies to make these determinations. Personal experience and anecdotes are beyond worthless; for example they are the reason why homeopathy is a $20 billion dollar industry even though it is actually provably useless.
- samtho 4y ago
  > This is not something you can claim. How could you possibly know that the SSRI is responsible for your recovery? This is the kind of trash thinking that makes it hard to get potentially life-changing medication. I take a heavily controlled substance for a sleep disorder and ADHD and our laws surrounding it’s distribution and refill are unconscionable. My life falls apart when there is lapse in medication and nobody takes it seriously. I cannot stay awake, focus, or function after about day 5 without it. It’s appalling that peoples’ well being is in danger every month because someone decided that it might be abused and restricting legal distribution is the solution for this. First, you do not and cannot know what this person has been through or know what their baseline is. Second, if someone’s life is improved when taking a medication, what does it matter to you that they take it? I’m not going argue the efficacy of the family of SSRIs, but we need to let patients make their own decisions and assessments of what works for their situation.
- pencilguin 4y ago
jokoon 4y ago
I'm quite a difficult skeptic, and I have to admit it's difficult to make a difference between melancholy and mild depression, especially after all those years spent being mildly depressed. Even if I hate the bootstrap argument, it still has an effect on me, despite my skepticism. In the end, depression alters my perception of what is really good for my mental health. It's very common that patients are difficult to treat, not only because they might disagree with the diagnostic, but because they can't really understand or perceive their emotions and subtle state of mind. Depression is a bit like obesity, you go back to the cause without caring for the consequences. I become a bit confused when my psychiatrist lets me choose if I want to keep taking those meds, instead of clearly telling me i should take them. But in my experience, those meds are good for me, even if they're not perfect. Maybe I will stop then one day, and see what happens, but it might hurt more than I think it will.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
Maybe if antidepressants weren't pushed so hard by big pharma, people would respect their use more. If I may, it's like the recent trend to call everything rape and sexual assault. At some point I have to start naturally doubting the claim on its face. That doesn't imply I think these things don't happen, just that I don't think someone making a stupid dad joke should turn into the woman shouting sexual assault and I find myself questioning all accusations as a result. --- I have no opinions on any specific person taking antidepressants, but it's not unreasonable for people to get weary when you can't throw a stick without hitting someone who has been diagnosed with something that's being medicated with antidepressants.

aa-jv 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sirsinsalot 4y ago
> Be careful what you pimp These aren't drugs you can just ask for (in the UK) at least and the parent wasn't "pimping". Undermining someone's account of their positive experience using therapeutic drugs because of your own bias shows an astounding lack of compassion.. Getting help, help that often involves therapeutic drugs to bootstrap other life changes _is_ taking responsibility. Your comment neatly sums up the toxic attitude of "I don't understand it so it must be bad". Put your ego aside and listen to people living with seriously debilitating neurological issues that you fortunately do not.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  Breaking cycles or bootstrapping changes for those too overwhelmed with depression or anxiety to make lige changes are the ideal uses for the drugs. And then you are supposed to get weaned off them until the next spiral, and then ise rhem to shorten that one too. But in the US plenty of doctors seem to treat simply asking for these drugs as the requisite symptoms for diagnosis. Andany people I care about were diagnosed with chronic depression or anxiety as early teens when all sorts of things are happening. Decades later they still take them and who can say now if they ever needed them, but they certainly do now. It is the normal state for their brains and any attempt to wean would require those complex feedback loops to rebalance. Continuous use isn't always bad either, but im the US we don't always try other options first, and if the mess work they almost never encourage you to stop, because if you hurt yourself that is a liability for them, but if you are a robot with no strong feelings about anything that eats cake, watches circuses and goes to work, then at least that is something.
  - aa-jv 4y ago
    Too many people take these drugs just so that they don't have to take responsibility for their own lives. And that is the cause of a lot of ruin around the world - not just in the US.
- aa-jv 4y ago
  On the contrary - there is now much evidence these drugs do not work as effectively as the glowing reviews state. There is also much evidence that they are being over-prescribed, for profit. So it is just as toxic to say "these drugs are awesome and you should try them in spite of all of this talk about them being ineffective, addictive, and being sold for massive profit" in that context.
ykonstant 4y ago
Your comment is execrable.
- aa-jv 4y ago
  So is the conclusion that these drugs are worth the side effects, expense, and significant addiction - just because someone on the Internet had a good time on them.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    These drugs do not give you a "good" time, they can at best give you a more normal one.
    - aa-jv 4y ago
      "normal" or "good", either way you become a "culturally acceptable" drug addict who must purchase a prescription for a drug made specifically for the purpose of creating a market of addicts.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        Well yeah it's "culturally acceptable" because of they low abuse potential, which is to say there are real actual differences that go into making it culturally acceptable. No one is crushing up their SSRIs and snorting them and going in to sex work to pay for the habit the same way heroin users do, because, well it's not a drug addiction as recognized by the psychiatric industry.
        aa-jv 4y ago
        >psychiatric industry The same people reaping massive profits are telling you whether or not you should think of these drugs as 'normal' or not. Nothing is normal about a lifetime addiction - whether the high you get is a party high, or a "I am feeling normal, where normal has been defined for me by a high priest who actually happens to also be my pimp" ..
cameronh90 4y ago
I believe I was quite careful in what I said rather than pimping antidepressants. Each time I start a course of antidepressants, I am genuinely worried what the outcome will be. Messing with your brain chemistry isn't something to do lightly. But equally, for many people, possibly including myself, it quite literally saves their life. However, I must take umbrage at your characterisation of how considering a course of these drugs is akin to taking on a lifetime addiction. They do cause withdrawal/discontinuation effects if you stop suddenly, and often tapering isn't particularly pleasant either. This is something that users of these drugs have known for a long time, likely since they first hit the market, but it took a surprisingly long time for the medical industry to accept this and list it on patient information leaflets. I also certainly accept that many doctors are quite terrible at discussing potential side effects and discontinuation syndrome with patients. This doesn't just concern antidepressants or even heavily marketed drugs. Common, generic, 50+ year old antibiotics can have really horrific side effects that aren't often mentioned by your doctor. This is a serious informed consent issue that needs addressing more widely within the medical field. However, these drugs are not heroin. They are, for most people, relatively easy (albeit sometimes unpleasant) to taper. They don't cause the same kind of pleasure/punishment cycle that makes substances like cocaine or heroin so hard to quit. You don't become a fiend when you miss a dose, you just feel shitty and get some brain zaps. Nobody's holding up gas stations to get some dollars to pay for their Prozac. If you do discontinue antidepressants, your life is typically better for having taken them compared to when you started, and for the most part, you can take these drugs for your entire life without significant adverse consequences.
- aa-jv 4y ago
  These drugs ruin lives just as efficiently as they 'improve' them. Be very, very careful if you are going to advise people that they should overlook the evidence of this fact, "because they're great for me so you should try them too!". Yes, you are pimping these drugs in so doing.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    It's very rare that these drugs ruin someone's life. For the most part, if they don't work for you, you just stop taking them and try something else instead without any long term side consequences. There is the very well known risk of suicide in adolescents in particular, which is printed in a black box warning on all of these drugs. This potential side effect usually very early on in the treatment, and usually occurs in people who already had suicidal tendencies. Discontinuing the drug immediately typically resolves this. Responsible doctors will weigh up this risk and ensure that everything is done to make this less likely. Other things are like sexual side effects can persist for some time after discontinuation, but nearly always resolve eventually. Serotonin syndrome is another risk but the chance of that is fairly low unless you take other serotonin-affecting drugs. Should these risks be weighed up when considering treatment? Absolutely. Does that make the drugs harmful overall? Absolutely not. Look at some of the people who've experienced permanent nerve damage as a result of quinolone antibiotics - yet they are still on the market because sometimes there is no alternative besides death.
pjc50 4y ago
Are diabetics "addicted" to insulin? > Taking a pill means not taking responsibility I think this nonsense deserves some psychoanalysis of itself, as well as acknowledging that brain chemistry does matter for various sorts of mental illness.
- aa-jv 4y ago
  Insulin is not the same as prozac, yo. One is designed to get you high so you can deal with your life in a "socially acceptable manner" - the other one helps blood sugar enter the body's cells so it can be used for energy. One is a social crutch - the other, vital medicine.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > One is designed to get you high This is wrong. I'll flag this thread for removal.
    - aa-jv 4y ago
      Its not wrong, it is factually correct. Mind-altering substances get you high... these pharmaceuticals are merely socially-acceptable high-producing mind-altering substances where - guess what - the science is not final on what they are doing to human beings.

tecleandor 4y ago

For what we've been reading this last years, it's not like antidepressants are worthless, it's like antidepressants aren't doing what we think are doing. The "depression is lack of serotonin" theories seem to have less and less base every day, but SSRIs don't only act on serotonin (just review their side effects). I've done, mostly, vortioxetine and sertraline. For some of us, some SSRIs or SNRIs work. Some don't. Probably it's not because of the serotonin. They have weirdly different effects depending on the person. But there's something going on that we still don't understand. Both because we don't understand the whole mechanism of depression, nor WTF the SSRIs and SNRIs are doing in our mind and body. At least in my humble opinion.

sirsinsalot 4y ago
Depression, OCD, GAD, ADHD and most other neurological issues stem from complex feedback loops and deficiency in neurotransmitter systems. They're labels applied to symptoms, not causes. Like any complex system with feedback loops, sometimes intervention in the loop causes it to rebalance. Sometimes the loop break is an intervention in serotonin, sometimes dopamine, sometimes GABA. There is never a silver bullet. But there are bullets that make life manageable enough to break cyclic issues.
cameronh90 4y ago
I completely agree. I believe we have no idea how these drugs work at the moment. For one, serotonin receptors are _everywhere_, notably the gut, which also has a strong relationship with emotional state. And as you point out, they don't just affect serotonin. Given we have a whole bunch of drugs that attempt to be serotonin selective, but where each one affects different people in different ways, it seems likely to me that the non-serotonin effects are likely significant. Plus, what's the reason so many of us are anxious, depressed, neurotic, autistic, ADHD, etc. without obvious cause? Why would a huge chunk of the population have a imbalance of brain chemicals? Ultimately I suspect my GAD/OCD is probably environmental, but environmental in a way that I can't easily identify or fix. Maybe it's the unnatural desk job oriented lifestyle I have, or maybe it's plastics in my blood, processed foods, lack of religion, social media or something else. Or maybe the neurotransmitters just sometimes need a kick up the arse to get them back into proper functioning. All I really know is sertraline helps me live a normal life, and for that I'm thankful.

JoeBtfsplk 4y ago

+1 for sertraline. One caveat is that you should ideally use them to get out of a funk and then discontinue if possible. At all times get a psych you who trust.

Fradow 4y ago

Another +1 for Sertraline. It worked wonder for me after 2 years of depression (classified as mild to severe using some clinical test). I've been taking it for 4 months, and since my life has gotten back to normal my doctor has advised tapering off of it, starting today. We'll see how it goes. I thought it was standard procedure to advise trying tapering off if your life got back to normal, and see how it goes (at least that's how my doctor presented it). I guess that's not a worldwide standard though.

Bellamy 4y ago

That's right, you are among the 0-15% SSRI's help. For the rest 85-100% of people they help as much as a sugar pill.

twawaaay 4y ago

> Statements like this need to be worded very carefully. In many people's minds, saying something like "most people don't need antidepressants" quickly becomes "antidepressants are useless". The statement is factually true and worded correctly.

creata 4y ago
But that's not enough. You have to give at least a little consideration to how your audience will interpret your words.

mrweasel 4y ago

> Statements like this need to be worded very carefully. I had a whole thing typed up, but deleted it, because I really only had one question: How would you word it differently? To me it seems a carefully worded as possible, while still alerting to the fact that a class of drugs with terrible side effects are being massively overprescribed.

welshwelsh 4y ago

>But for me, they are life changing This is not something you can claim. How could you possibly know that the SSRI is responsible for your recovery? I'm not going to say that antidepressants are useless, but it is important to understand how placebo works. The key point is that placebo works and it is impossible for an individual to distinguish between a placebo and a life changing drug. In antidepressant studies, SSRIs often outperform placebo to a degree. However, the placebo group has an excellent recovery rate! That means there are people who are clinically depressed, suicidal etc. who are then given a sugar pill as part of a study and make a full recovery. >You often need to try 2 or 3 different SSRIs That makes it even murkier. SSRIs take a long time to work, and if you try several of them that's going to take months to years. There's a high probability that in that time, you might naturally recover. You have the combined benefit of placebo and waiting in addition to the effects of the SSRI. You tried 2 SSRIs that didn't work. What makes you so confident that it was the third? Again, I'm not saying SSRIs are useless. But it's important that we rely on controlled studies to make these determinations. Personal experience and anecdotes are beyond worthless; for example they are the reason why homeopathy is a $20 billion dollar industry even though it is actually provably useless.

samtho 4y ago
> This is not something you can claim. How could you possibly know that the SSRI is responsible for your recovery? This is the kind of trash thinking that makes it hard to get potentially life-changing medication. I take a heavily controlled substance for a sleep disorder and ADHD and our laws surrounding it’s distribution and refill are unconscionable. My life falls apart when there is lapse in medication and nobody takes it seriously. I cannot stay awake, focus, or function after about day 5 without it. It’s appalling that peoples’ well being is in danger every month because someone decided that it might be abused and restricting legal distribution is the solution for this. First, you do not and cannot know what this person has been through or know what their baseline is. Second, if someone’s life is improved when taking a medication, what does it matter to you that they take it? I’m not going argue the efficacy of the family of SSRIs, but we need to let patients make their own decisions and assessments of what works for their situation.
pencilguin 4y ago

jokoon 4y ago

I'm quite a difficult skeptic, and I have to admit it's difficult to make a difference between melancholy and mild depression, especially after all those years spent being mildly depressed. Even if I hate the bootstrap argument, it still has an effect on me, despite my skepticism. In the end, depression alters my perception of what is really good for my mental health. It's very common that patients are difficult to treat, not only because they might disagree with the diagnostic, but because they can't really understand or perceive their emotions and subtle state of mind. Depression is a bit like obesity, you go back to the cause without caring for the consequences. I become a bit confused when my psychiatrist lets me choose if I want to keep taking those meds, instead of clearly telling me i should take them. But in my experience, those meds are good for me, even if they're not perfect. Maybe I will stop then one day, and see what happens, but it might hurt more than I think it will.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

Maybe if antidepressants weren't pushed so hard by big pharma, people would respect their use more. If I may, it's like the recent trend to call everything rape and sexual assault. At some point I have to start naturally doubting the claim on its face. That doesn't imply I think these things don't happen, just that I don't think someone making a stupid dad joke should turn into the woman shouting sexual assault and I find myself questioning all accusations as a result. --- I have no opinions on any specific person taking antidepressants, but it's not unreasonable for people to get weary when you can't throw a stick without hitting someone who has been diagnosed with something that's being medicated with antidepressants.