Posted by mtdewcmu on July 12, 2011, at 14:04:21
In reply to Re: Peter Breggin - mixed feelings » zonked, posted by Phillipa on July 12, 2011, at 10:54:44
> No haven't read any of his stuff. I had meant written by Kramer my goof. But wonder why Breggin was the name I posted first. Strange Freudian slip? Phillipa
Maybe because Breggin is usually the one sharing his controversial opinions. I wasn't very persuaded by the Kramer article. The flaws he points out in the "debunking" studies need to be addressed by experts. The public can't assess those problems. What I took from it is that Kramer earnestly wants to believe that ADs are good drugs. In the face of a lot of uncertainty, he is going to take the side of ADs. I am waiting for the definitive clinical study to be done, if it ever will be. I think that some of the debunkers, especially in the popular media, have come to believe that ADs are _literally_ placebos, as if you could replace them with sugar pills and no one would be the wiser. I think these people would be surprised, if they actually took the drugs, how intense the effects are, and how completely different they make you feel. The question is not whether ADs are literally nothing but placebos, but whether, for all that they do to alter your consciousness, you nevertheless wind up right where you started in terms of symptoms of depression. I know that, for me, the results haven't been overwhelmingly positive. Whether they have made things substantially better over the long haul is another question. I think it's an important question to ask, even though psychiatrists like Kramer seem happy to interpret the lack of knowledge as the glass being half full. It doesn't encourage me when boosters like Kramer advance obviously-fallacious arguments, like the one about maintenance studies where long-term depression patients were more likely to relapse into depression when their ADs were secretly replaced with placebos. Everyone who has gone through the AD merry-go-round knows that ADs cause withdrawal when you try to quit them, so how can you separate out depression caused by withdrawal from depression that is naturally-occurring? So I try to judge for myself if the pills are doing any good and try to limit how much I spend on them, and how much hope I invest in them, and in the meantime I'm waiting for either someone to do the definitive study to resolve the issue for good, or for something else to come out that is clearly better than placebo.
I have a complex inferiority.
Rx: 40mg citalopram, 30mg d-amphetamine, 15mg mirtazapine, 300mg bupropion
Dx: ADHD (inattentive subtype), depression
poster:mtdewcmu
thread:990777
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110630/msgs/990820.html