Antidepressants

Whats your opinion of them?

I know sometimes they get overused but I think that they have an honest use. My parents say they have noticed me doing a little better since I've started taking anti anxiety medication (cant remember when) but I think I need to see a psychologist again because its starting to get back up.

And I just took something that I take at night if I'm especially stressed at night (alot of times my mind runs rampant when I try to sleep and I end up thinking the most depressing of thoughts) and I've noticed it working.

What do you think?

I think that they have a genuine use for helping people who have mental illness, and to demonize them does nobody any good. But I also think that advertising them is a horrible idea, because it takes money away from the development of better medications towards marketing and selling substandard or relatively ineffective medications to people who likely don't need them.

They work for some people, apparently best when combined with therapy?

They're not a miracle cure, though: there are studies that suggest that anywhere between seventy-five and eighty-five percent of the effect of SSRI medications is placebo, for example. Personally, I just experienced a dampening of all positive emotion, accompanied by anorgasmia, while I was on them. On my depression, they had no effect whatsoever.

My grandad used to have to take Lithium to keep his depression in check... I think modern ones are better, because at least they don't have as much chance to lead to a complete personality break (this is from my mum talking, the depression had gone by the time I was born)

In principle, I'm strongly in favor of antidepressants and other psychiatric medications. I hope for neuroscience to progress far enough that at some point, any and all problems with the "mind" can be reliably addressed through the application of the proper chemicals or some other technology which acts directly on the brain and nervous system.

Obviously though, at this stage in the science, the effectiveness of psychiatric medications varies in practice. I'm on Celexa, which works great, and is cheaper than my previous medication, Lexapro, but before Lexapro, I took Paxil, whose side effects were worse than the depression. And they're all SSRIs. So clearly, it can be necessary to shop around.

Antidepressants took me out of a case of depression that was, well, a walking nightmare. It's possible that just therapy could have cured it; I've no way to know either way. The medication I was prescribed (called Fontex; I don't know if it has another trade name in other countries) had no side effects that I can remember. My medical history did however disqualify me from joining the armed forces. Granted, that might have been as much because I got depression in the first place as because I was on medication.

I think that gives me a good enough reason to defend antidepressants. (I guess I could qualify that with "as long as they're prescribed accurately and in the right amounts", but why? Nobody ever feels the need to say that when talking about the prescription of, say, antibiotics or chemotherapy. It's accepted that any medication can have unpleasant side effects, and that most will cause havoc when used improperly; yet this isn't used to criticise any type of medicine over the board, except when it comes to psychopharmaca.)

I see such a kneejerk skepticism against antidepressants on the internet today (up to and including people commenting with "I don't like antidepressants either" on a pro-medication blog post). This may be unfair of me, but I sometimes wonder how many of the people with that kneejerk reaction have medical knowledge and/or personal experience with depression.

edited 22nd Jun '11 5:21:06 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

I'm on the edge about antidepressants. On one hand, my experiences with them for treating my depression have been nothing short of horrible, only exacerbating it, and their efficacy over a placebo is rather questionable. That said, I've at least seen a few cases where they've been a serious boon, and my experience with SSR Is has been significantly better as anxiolytics, with fluvoxamine having helped me deal with my OCD quite a bit, so I can't exactly discount them.

Really, I think they have a value, but I'm a tad concerned about how well they test in comparison to placebos, especially since they seem very commonly prescribed.

edited 22nd Jun '11 7:24:02 AM by Miijhal

Here's the problem with antidepressants. When a doctor tells you that prescribing them is more of an art than a science.

The medical establishment needs to work more on their scientific criteria, with actual measurements and tests, rather than just trying pills and guessing results.

Yes, that is a difficult barrier. Did you believe I thought it was trivial? But it wasn't so long ago that being able to see inside bodies was unimaginable, now we've got multiple methods.

Pursuit of more scientific prescription methods is important, but sadly, I don't think it receive enough research investment...especially not compared to the marketing spent.

edited 22nd Jun '11 8:46:04 AM by blueharp

The problem is that antidepressants work on brain chemistry, and you can't really measure the brain chemistry of living people directly.

I've been on citalopram for 8 days and so far all they've done for me is make it harder to poop. I've been told they take a while to kick in though. I've also not started CBT yet, so there's also that.

Its going to take much longer than 8 days.

I'm on them, its helped more than I can imagine.

Same here.

I like not having ridiculous highs and lows in my moods and generally feeling "life sucks" all the time.

I used to take them, but then I stopped because I didn't think they were helping me at all. I never expected them too, though, and I did hear something a while ago that if you don't think medicine's going to work, it's less likely to work. Like the opposite of the placebo effect, I think, I don't know.

But then, I've two friends who are on antidepressants, and they swear they're a life-saver, and say they're much better since they've started taking them. I don't know though, it must just depend on the person.

In my experience, antidepressants did help with the totally going to shoot my brains off right now moments. They also brought with them an all-encompassing apathy and had anorgasmia as a side-effect.

Eventually I stopped taking them. Unfortunately, the all-encompassing apathy sticked.

I was on an ADD medication (Straterra) that the doctor said would help with my depression. I'm neither ADD nor am I clinically depressed, so it did nothing except make it worse.

I was on antidepressants for some time. They have some annoying side effects, might make you feel weird and more often than not prevent you from drinking but they do help. They won't get rid of sadness but they will help you to live through the worst. But I'd never take them without consulting with doctors, those things are for long-term use and can cause long-term fuck ups if you use them the wrong way

I know someone on antidepressants. Here's the way she described it (heavily paraphrased):

"When you're clinically depressed, it's like you completely lose the ability to feel happy. When on antidepressants, you regain that ability. It doesn't mean that you'll feel great all the time or even most of the time, but you actually can feel happy again."

I've taken a number of different antidepressants even though I don't think I'm clinically depressed though I have attempted suicide recently. I recently got off Prozac because of drug interactions issues. I'm going to be taking Zoloft soon.

I'm not against anti-depressants, even though they didn't work for me at all.

LH: I'm sorry to hear that (the spoiler part). My PM box is open if you want to talk.

They took me off Zoloft because of... side effects that were unplanned. A Nerf gun and auditory hallucinations were involved. Yeech.

I'm on better meds now at a lower dose though. The side effects have gone from "Well, Mr. Libido just skipped town" to "Oh, Mr. Libido, I haven't seen you in a while. How was your week?" and then Mr. Libido's all like "Hmm, gotten any action since I was gone?" - to which I'd probably reply, "Nope, not yet, but Mr. Happy seems to be in working order since you came back. He's a bit more needy than he used to be and he tends to need me to be cuddled by a nice lady or have me think about being cuddled by nice ladies before he does anything though."

Yes, I just gave Hetalia Axis Powers Moe Personification to the various aspects of my psychology.

Antidepressants creep me out...chiefly because I read the research on their impact on neurobiochemistry. and it really freaks me out that there's little or no real evidence that they work 'as described, as intended, etc', because of the major lack of human brain studies, or the effects on differing human biochemistries, etc etc...you get the idea

They're a sledgehammer solution for a range of eggshell problems, there are serious questions about dosage levels (mind you, oral contraceptives started out with massive doses before more research was done, and thalidomide could treat cancer (not every medical progress is initially perfect))

but, there are unintended applications. Prozac is good for PMS. Not in the sense that if you're constantly bombed out of your head on prozac, PMS (yours or your partner's) won't be a problem, but if you (PM Sing woman) take Prozac for the PMS-prone days, at a 5% recommended dose, you won't "become hyper-responsive to quite trivial stresses", but you'll still have your libido (and all the other things that don't coexist well with prozac)

I'm not convinced, but maybe in time

In my own experience, it's more like gaining the ability to not focus on things. You still feel like shit but it's like having a buffer to stop you becoming consumed by it.

But everyone's experiences are different, of course.

Paxil pretty much killed my dad, and thus I will never take anti-depressants regardless of how I feel. He seemed to be doing ok and on the upswing after spending more time seeing a good therapist, and then he started taking Paxil and about 3 days later decided to hang himself.

My mom is a nurse, and I'm a Psych major, so we have varying debates on our preferred methods of treatment for depression(She supports meds, I support therapy) and we both have a distaste for the others method.

edited 27th Jun '11 10:21:22 AM by Barkey

I took Mirtazapine when I was on them. Ultimately, it did do some good, though the fatigue was insane. I could sleep for 18 hours a day and wake up feeling like I hadn't slept at all, and I generally did get around 13-14 hours at that time - twice what I get now, at least. I got used to that after a while though, and they did end up improving my mood to the point where I had an interest in doing anything other than experiencing pain.

The problem for me was that it felt like they were a mask - I wasn't feeling my own emotions, just those induced my drugs. I was really uncomfortable with that, and ironically it was only the drugs themselves that stopped me feeling worse because of it. I wasn't able to stop though because they were keeping me going.

Ultimately, I did and I'm glad for it, but as much as I'd rather not admit it - they really did help me a lot, and I'd certainly recommend them. Just be prepared to have to try a few brands, and for it to take a few weeks to kick in.