Antidepressant Drugs Don’t Work
February 27th, 2008Dermot notes, “Actually, they DO work — they make lots of money for pharmaceutical companies…which is their primary function.”
It’s tough to beat that!
I’d just add that if “talking treatments” are going to replace the drugs, inevitably, diet, lifestyle and work choices are going to come up. What does this mean? The flow of Brits to New Zealand might rise sharply! HEHE
Via: Independent:
They are among the biggest-selling drugs of all time, the “happiness pills” that supposedly lift the moods of those who suffer depression and are taken by millions of people in the UK every year.
But one of the largest studies of modern antidepressant drugs has found that they have no clinically significant effect. In other words, they don’t work.
The finding will send shock waves through the medical profession and patients and raises serious questions about the regulation of the multinational pharmaceutical industry, which was accused yesterday of withholding data on the drugs.
It also came as Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, announced that 3,600 therapists are to be trained during the next three years to provide nationwide access through the GP service to “talking treatments” for depression, instead of drugs, in a £170m scheme. The popularity of the new generation of antidepressants, which include the best known brands Prozac and Seroxat, soared after they were launched in the late 1980s, heavily promoted by drug companies as safer and leading to fewer side-effects than the older tricyclic antidepressants.
My son was on antidepressants and hated them. He said they made him feel groggy and even suicidal at times. We were very concerned with him. I noticed that as soon as he started smoking marijuana with his friends, he started eating better, he looked a lot better, his zest for life and university studies improved and he is an altogether a changed person. Having smoked myself, and knowing the benefits marijuana brings , I would suggest depressed people smoke up and stop taking the man-made crap that that the big drug companies are pedalling for profits.
This is a big DUHH!
I say this as a person who has thought about suicide a couple of times in my lifetime. I guess when you think about killing yourself you are really depressed!
Moving the body (exercise), finding people to express yourself to (emoting), changing one’s diet, getting light on the body, and finding a way to meditate is my recommended cure for depression. Means you have to work to to pull yourself up by your own boot straps, and that’s a hard road to hoe. But it works.
A magic pill- there is no SUCH THING – whatever the condition.
Krimles – marijuana works for some – but I would only recommend it for conditions of physical pain or loss of appetite during a healing process. But that’s just me. Sure its fun to get high on marijuana, but it can also be a hindrance to healing a life condition especially depression.
My nephew had massive migraine headaches when he was in his late teens. He was out of school for almost a year. He took the drugs. Did they help him? I dunno. He was medicating himself with illegal substances at the same time.
I think that these drugs helped him to talk … so in that sense they did help him.
But did the drugs – Prozac, etc. “cure” his depression, No!
I also have two friends who don’t know each other who have used marijuana daily for most of their adult lives and they are in their 50’s now. I think both have benefited, and have not succumbed to deep depression, but they are also using the marijuana to avoid the connection to their deep feelings. I think both of these friends (oddly both are Pisces) have deep wells of deep despair and anger within themselves that the marijuana prevents them from going to. But going there, I think, would cure their depression.
My thought is that depression is a word coined for someone who feels “stuck” – like the wheels of the self are spinning in the sand. If taking a pill for awhile, or smoking a joint or whatever it takes to pull a person out of themselves long enough to get a new perspective is swell.
But duhhhhhh. NO pill or a toke will cure anything.
I think we need to make an important distinction here: it’s not that they don’t work, exactly, it’s that they don’t work any better than a placebo. The placebo effect is very real and very powerful. The first problem of course, is that you are better off taking a placebo, but as dermont pointed out, that wouldn’t increase the profits of the drug companies. The second, and more important, problem, is that these “magic pills” just cover up the underlying problems. People are depressed for a reason, and taking pills won’t solve that problem. It’s not just “brain chemistry” but lifestyle problems. (duh).