Posted by hyperfocus on May 4, 2011, at 21:35:01
In reply to This study seems to cast a shadow on med combos..., posted by Bob on May 3, 2011, at 22:09:17
I cannot really understand these studies because:
a)They're assuming that 'major depression' is a cleary defined disorder with very specific biological markers for diagnosis and treatment. Mental illness isn't like heart disease or high blood pressure or diabetes. It seems to me you could pick 100 people diagnosed with MDD and find that you needed 100 indivdual treatment plans to bring all of them to remission. You can't just lump everybody into one group. It just seems like really bad science.
b)Different ADs are not uniform in their theraputic response. ADs are not like other drugs like statins or beta-blockers. A person can respond to one AD and not to another, in the same class or otherwise. There's no explanation why somebody doesn't respond to Effexor but does to Cymbalta, or Prozac vs. Paxil. Or why they can have zero response to 3 drugs given individually but do respond to some combination of the three, but only at a specific dosage. Again it just seems like bad science.
One of these days somebody is going to do a metastudy which shows that for any set of conclusions any study on mental illness reaches, you can present another study that completely contradicts those conclusions. I know you need nice labels for your data in order to do empirical investigations, but if your labels don't match the reality of the disease then you're just going to end up in silliness.
C-PTSD: social phobia / major depression / dissociation
Currently on 200mg amitriptyline + 12.5mg tianeptine + .25mg risperidone, single dose at night
Improving
poster:hyperfocus
thread:984479
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110502/msgs/984581.html