Strange article. It says nothing of gun-free zones in the title and yet it does admit that no one knows if it is causation or correlation when it comes to these SSRIs. And then it goes on to speak about gun free zones, which really should have been the title of the article.
Indeed with the incredible number of people that have taken these pills, I think it is more likely that these folks just happened to be taking the pills.
now many experts are saying that it is dopamine deficiency and not serotonin deficiency that is causing severe depression.
I take an snri called Wellbutrin that works on dopamine levels. And that has helped me a tremendous amount.
I took maybe eight ssris before that. They did nothing.
To be fair this was due to a brain injury causing depression and the areas of the brain that will hurt are the ones that produce a lot of dopamine.
all in all I think in fifty or a hundred years they will think our treatment of psychiatric illness was barbaric.
and it won’t take a hundred years to know that gun-free zones are ridiculous. guns don’t go around shooting themselves off. Just like hammers don’t strike themselves into people’s heads just like knives don’t luech out and stab somebody on their own
It’s so obvious. What we’re seeing now is the result of the Liberals’ successful drive to get the mental hospitals closed down in the ‘70s and ‘80s for “humanitarian” reasons, the ‘60s and ‘70s pot-and-acid hippies all grown up, Valiumed and in charge of much of government and business, their Ritalin and Adderall’ed kids and grandkids going crazy on the streets, and a hyped-up “health crisis” that allows all this to happen.
Every neighbor who told me that she or he was on antidepressants or tranquilizers had been a pothead or other kind of addict for years. And I’ve been around quite a while.
That's the point isn't it.
I have had numerous friends commit suicide and can personally attest to others who have made it successfully through depression with the use of anti-depressants.
If causation cannot be established (and so far it cannot), this article is worthless.
It is far easier to establish causation with pot smoking or other drugs (including alcohol).
There is no greater causation established with antidepressants than there is with the popularity of "low carb" dieting or the growth of smart phones (i.e. NONE for either).
“Today, with the way antidepressants are prescribed, nearly one in four Americans will meet the criteria to be diagnosed with depression within their lifetime, and will be prescribed medications that interfere with how their brain functions.”
I still remember when I started college at ESU, it seemed like half of the people there were in the ‘psych’ program...and even then I was wondering what the need for all those ‘psych’ majors was. I’m still wondering that, but I see their political power in the way drugs are now handed out like crazy.
I’ve told my kids to NEVER get involved in the ‘mental health’ system, nor let those monsters get anywhere near their kids. If they have problems, get with us, or other family or close friends. Relationship problems - suck it up, life will be fine. Similar for at work - if they give you a questionnaire asking shrink questions, you had better answer that you are ‘happy’ every day and always ready to jump out of bed to go to work - otherwise you’ll have an army of people demanding to ‘help’ you get through life.
My only exception to the above would be people who have serious chemical imbalances...but I suspect that is very, very, rare in families with no history of it.
One of the problems with psychiatric drugs is the issue of self evaluation when seeing how effective the drug is. If there was a high blood pressure medicine which worked in 90% of the patients, did nothing in 9% and caused potentially fatal heart rythm promlems in 1%, you would not tell your doctor how you felt and leave it at that. Your blood pressure and EKG would be checked to see in which group you fall in. There are few similar tests to see how psychiatric drugs are poking at the brain. Most prescriptions amount to taking the pills and telling your doctor how you feel without any objective test to evaluate how your brain is working. Your mind interfers with any test of your brain.
There is so much about the brain that we just don’t understand yet.
The Columbine killers (I was in law school at CU Boulder at the time) were two teenage boys on antidepressants. At least one of them was. I really don’t think you’re supposed to give those brain-altering medications to teens. Their brains are still forming. I don’t think the human brain is fully mature until sometime in the mid-twenties.
I certainly stand to be corrected, though.