Posted by med_empowered on July 28, 2005, at 18:00:38
In reply to Battle Brews Over Antidepressant Use, posted by jerrympls on July 27, 2005, at 15:24:59
Hey. I've had both successes and failures with antidepressants and combo therapy, so skeptical research like this is very refreshing. My own take on it is that while antidepressants obviously do *something*, this *something* may or may not relieve depression/anxiety in patients...I also think the chemical imbalance theory is waaaay oversimplified and excludes a lot of important factors, such as life factors and social factors. I think its important to question EVERY treatment we have available, instead of treating them delicately; scientific inquiry is based on a no-holds barred, question-everything approach with the idea of pursuing knowledge and (in this case) better treatments/products. If we continue to buy the line that today's anti-depressants are very effective in spite of lots of data that shows they sometimes aren't that great, and that they come with lots of side effects for many people, how will we progress? Bottom line, I think, is this: anti-depressants help some people, but they're definitely not "the" answer for treating depression. In making informed decision about health care, consumers need to be told that some studies do in fact show little difference between anti-depressants and placebo, and they need to know that there are side-effects, which can be severe for some people (or non-existent for others). I think data like this is a call for psychiatry to take a more humble, inquisitive approach to treatment, rather than simply repeating the "antidepressants effectively treat depression" mantra over and over. There's no need to ditch the antidepressants completely, but it would be nice to explore new drugs, new theories, and new understanding of depression and emotional life in general.
poster:med_empowered
thread:534296
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050728/msgs/534926.html