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Who wants to bet this research has no impact?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Anti-depressants of little use.
The pharmaceutical companies will already have an enormous counter-lobbying campaign in place. . . and politicians, doctors, advisors and everybody else on the expenses-paid junkets with free food and drink galore will be quickly persuaded to disregard this research...
I'm sure anti-depressants are sometimes useful but I don't think it's any coincidence that
Just like it was no coincidence that the smoking ban came after a very hard push by pharmaceutical companies and organisations funded by them (doling out nicotine on the NHS makes them billions).
Transport, healthcare, the treasury - corporate interests are so deeply ingrained and consistently override the public interest... There needs to be real change.
The pharmaceutical companies will already have an enormous counter-lobbying campaign in place. . . and politicians, doctors, advisors and everybody else on the expenses-paid junkets with free food and drink galore will be quickly persuaded to disregard this research...
I'm sure anti-depressants are sometimes useful but I don't think it's any coincidence that
The number of prescriptions for anti-depressants hit a record high in England in 2006 - even though official guidance stresses they should not be a first line treatment for mild depression.
Just like it was no coincidence that the smoking ban came after a very hard push by pharmaceutical companies and organisations funded by them (doling out nicotine on the NHS makes them billions).
Transport, healthcare, the treasury - corporate interests are so deeply ingrained and consistently override the public interest... There needs to be real change.
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I don't have the scientific knowledge to come to a conclusion. I'm sure someone more intelligent will sooner or later.
But it may be a case of doctors giving out a pill and thinking that it will make everything go away?
Yeah to some extent I think - and probably patients more than anything. People expect and demand pills to make them lose weight, pills to give up smoking and so it follows that people think a pill will make them happy and clear away all their worries... Pharmaceutical companies are very happy to cater for people's laziness and demands for an instant 'solution.'
http://vbulletin.thesite.org/showthread.php?t=105866&highlight=anti+depressants
It's just too easy too believe in a magic pill to away all your worries.
While I think anti-depressant use needs to be reconsidered especially as a first line treatment for mild depression, there's a general consensus that mental health provisions are inadequate and that GPs are lazy, overpaid and underworked, so what happens when they stop prescribing anti-depressants? That's not going to stop friends/family members recommending them to individuals, or reduce the sales of things like St Johns Wort... as said, it's 'easier' to think a pill will do something than going for a brisk walk or hitting the bike.
It's become an absolute mainstay of popular culture that depression IS caused by a chmeical inbalance in your body and that SSRI's help you overcome depression by correcting that.
It's still just theory though.
I remember seeing a study showing that people born since 1945 are 10 times more likely to suffer from depression than those born before. And it cannot be explained away by people going to their doctor more, or depression being diagnosed more easily, as these were taken into account in the study.
Human biology doesn't change that quickly, which indicates that depression has more social causes than medical causes. And if it is chemical maybe it'd down to our increasingly poor diet and lack of activity, but then the answer still isn't SSRI's it's a better diet and more excercise.
This is old news really. The evidence has been there for a few years now yet the attitiude remains the same and the big POharma companies are lining their pockets.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4920-unpublished-data-reverses-riskbenefit-of-drugs.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/129048.stm
British Medical Journal
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/qa-display/short/bmj_el%3b36968
I think it's important to remember that depression is a medical illness regardless of whether any given medication does or doesn't help with it.
That said I've never found any anti-depressants to have any effect on me except side effects.
I really dont think it is until you either suffer from it or you see someone directly suffer from it that you realise what it really is like.
SSRI's should be more restricted to the moderate and severe depressives. But more than anything there is a dire need for more talking therapies.
When clinical trails of SSRI's done by the pharma companies were brought together under the freedom of information act it was found that a placebo was as effective SSRI's at least 75% of the time. With some SSRI's it was found that they were no better at all than a placebo yet still increased suicidal thoughts.
Those trails involved all manner of depressions.
That means that if you did happen to take an SSRI and thought that it worked for you, it's more likey it was the placebo effect, the belief that you were going to get better, that worked for you rather than any chemical actually inside that little pills.
That indicates that the majority of depression would be better treated as a mental issue rather than a chemical one.
I don't think anybody's denying here that it's an illness. It's just that the cause of depression still isn't really understood, yet with the over prescription of these drugs it's being treated as though we do.
Nobody here has said that though?
I don't yet subscribe to the theory that depression is caused by a chemical inbalance in you brain because I han't seen any conclusive evidence to suggest that it is.
I have seen plenty of evidence however, that SSRI's induce feelings of suicide whilst in many cases only being marginally better (at best) than a placebo at relieving depression.
None of this means that I think depression isn't a serious illness.
I don't think that's the issue though.
SSRI's work on idea that depression is caused by a chemical inbalence or lack of feel good chemicals in your brain. As though it's something you can't fix without these SSRI's. It's become a mainstay of popular culture that this is a fact - when it's anything but.
Don't get me wrong placebo is the most effective drug in the world - it can treat almost anything. But when a placebo is 75% effective at worst, as drug that increases suicidal thoughts, should we really being putting so much faith into it, marketing it as a cure for feeling down, and giving it to millions?
Of course no one has actually said that....
There is a whole load of them on the BBC website.
It works the other way with MDMA. And if you reduce the levels of seritonin in animals they do tend to exhibit the symptoms of depression. But thats really only part of the picture, which is why SSRI's alone can be relatively useless - they need to be coupled with therapy.
Sorry to divert but this caught my eye and the Social Historian in me couldn't resist a comment. Did this study relate to this country only? It does raise some interesting questions because social conditions have improved massively since 1945 here and in the western world since 1945.
Perhaps a differing sense of perspective could be a factor, I would guess might have people looked at the suffering involved wartime and the Great Depression in relation to their own situation. The other thing I can think of is that maybe people were less likely to visit a doctor for help or did not recognize the conditions as much as we do now. Certainly people were not even aware of PTSD until much later.
I'd agree - people with depression were more likely not to see it as an illness or it to be treated as such, and for the person to to be told to pull themselves together.
There probably were fewer cases of PTSD however. Of course its hard to tell, but there does seem to have been an increase in the twentieth century. WW1 may have been bad, but so was the Penisular campaign and Waterloo killed a greater % of the soldier's taking part than most WW1 battles.
However up until the 20th century most people were used to violent deaths (agricultural and factory accidents, plus illness and much greater violent crime by now) and dangerous, unhealthy working habitats. Battlefields were an extreme example of what many people saw in there day to day lives.
Death comes as much more shocking now because few of us are used to it. A Glaswegian Infantry NCO in 1815 would have had a much tougher upbringing which would, to a greater extent, provide immunity from the shock of battle.
Is low levels of sertonin a cause or a resul of depression is the key question and one that hasn't been answered.
We do know that millions of people have been sold the line that SSRI's work well to fix a cause that hasn't been prooven, when the evidence suggests otherwise.
This "I fell low, I must have depression and I need Prozac" attitude is fucked up. That's all.
I think this is good reading
http://www.clinical-depression.co.uk/Depression_Information/causes2.htm
That I definitely agree with. But that has been fueled by the US and their comercialisation of healthcare.
They will also continue to tell us about Attention Deficit Disorder and other mythical conditions. We'll continue to be told that kids need to be given Ritalin in order to turn them into good little zombies. This when we survived perfectly well without such rubbish for hundreds of years...
I know. I havn't written off SSRI's as being useful, I just as beleive their a cure - which is what they're marketed as and it's what a lot of people believe.
They seem lazy to me. They're given out at the drop of a hat when really given how efective they are, the risks they carry and the fact there's more effective ways to combat depression they should be the last resort.
Well the three of biggest thing you can start combatting depression with is diet, excercise and sleep patterns.
Three of the biggest things that affect our feell good chemicals in our body.
And Ritalin is an SSRI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6vfSFXKlnO0
We all get depressed at some point in time. We don't all get depression.
This is shocking really.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ASa7iQQpOMI
If we started looking after themselves properly, the numbers with "depression" would plummet, I guarantee it. Depression is one of those terms which is used too loosely, in my opinion. None of us denies there are people out there who are genuinely depressed, who do need help. But the current system is failing them, for the simple reason that so many people are now claiming to be depressed.
And doesn't it show the ultimate contradiction - in an age where we're meant to be richer than ever, and have more material goods than ever, we seem to be MORE miserable?
It was for mild to moderate depression.
For those with moderate to severe depression the latest study into the clinical trials showed that the SSRIs were significantly more effective than placebo. Or that's what the Guardian says, I don't have the medical knowledge to wade through the actual report.
I don't think serotonin is the cause of depression, the brain's far too complicated for that, but I don't think that the press coverage that "prozac is shit" is helpful either.
Nor is stargalaxy's attitude that people cry that they're depressed too easily.