Posted on 02/18/2008 9:26:24 PM PST by neverdem
Despite recent bad publicity over withheld studies showing marginal results, the resume of America's arsenal of antidepressants is enviable: consort to celebrities, subject of best-selling books and tabloid headlines. They may be the most celebrated pills since Valium.
Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro, among others, have become both household words and medicine-cabinet staples. Known collectively as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, these antidepressants are prescribed for anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and numerous conditions besides depression.
SSRIs are now the most commonly prescribed of all medications in this country. The rate at which physicians prescribed SSRIs more than doubled between 1995 and 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. SSRIs are considered the first line of defense in treating depression, an illness that afflicts more than 20 million Americans.
Given their wide circulation, SSRIs will have a profound impact on the nation's mental health in the decades to come. But whether their impact is for good or ill depends upon whom you ask.
Most antidepressants boost the amounts of messenger chemicals, or neurotransmitters, circulating in the brain. SSRIs were the first to target the key neurotransmitter serotonin, with highly touted...
--snip--
Just last month, a report in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that the makers of drugs such as Prozac and Paxil didn't publish results of trials indicating that their products performed just modestly better than placebos, which have no actual pharmaceutical value.
--snip--
Rosie Meysenburg of Dallas and Sara Bostock of California met at a public hearing on SSRIs sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration. Both had strong reservations about the safety of SSRIs. Together, they created a Web site, SSRIstories.com, which catalogs more than 2,000 news stories detailing violent acts -- murders, suicides, school shootings -- by individuals taking SSRIs...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I'm sorry you and your brother had those bad experiences. Depression and suffering of all kinds is treated completely differently in my religion than what you describe, other than the usefulness of prayer. We accept that God gives us individualized crosses to bear and the suffering they entail. I don't mean accept in the sense that we enjoy it: the burdens can be excruciating at times, and we try to reduce the pain through medication and therapy. The unique religious aspect is that the suffering can lead to graces one might not receive otherwise (i.e. redemptive suffering). Good luck with your treatment and I hope you'll one day again come to realize that you can't do anything without God's help.
I suspect my thyroid is the problem. I've been trying to convince doctors of that for 13 years. A couple of years ago one of the normal ranges for bloodwork was changed. I might qualify for help now.
As if grieving weren't enough, I was really quite frightened about how I would cope once the shock wore off. Others have been watching me quite closely as well. It's gratifying to know that the worst has happened but I'm ok.
In the mid 1990s I gained over 100 pounds on lithium, cogentan, trilothon, depakote, and it was all found to be a total misdiagnosis. I went from 155 (I am 5’ 10 1/2”) to almost 300 pounds in less than a year, and it was my years I wanted to look my best...my mid to late 20s and early 30s. The bastard doctors, once I found out it was a misdiagnosis, I wanted to sue them to bankruptcy, but the statute of limitations ran out. I am still suffering the problems with weight and self esteem due to that horrendous weight gain. I lost about 2/3 of the weight but the damage was done by doctors more interested in making money off medications than helping a person who in the end did not have the right diagnosis.
Please focus on the part of my message that addresses “faith”.
Faith is not about brow-beating.
We are here for a purpose and it is important that we appreciate that purpose.
Faith is about having a set of values and doing our best to live up to them.
Faith is about believing in something larger than ourselves and doing our best to live up to the responsibility of being fruitful with our gifts.
Faith is NOT based upon the behavior of the members of a church or religion, because those members are people with the same weaknesses that you and I have.
Faith must be rooted in the teachings of the church or religion. That is what you pray for! To understand the teachings. To understand the will of God. Not what you want.
If you’d like more discussion let’s take it off-line to limit the editorials.
Glad you're doing well. I also spend quite a bit of time reading about lab tests and usually catch one or two subtleties the doctor missed.
As if grieving weren't enough, I was really quite frightened about how I would cope once the shock wore off. Others have been watching me quite closely as well. It's gratifying to know that the worst has happened but I'm ok.
Referring to your comment above, I was just reading about "dissociative" reactions (refreshing my memory after all these years). Sometimes during a period of great stress one can feel outside of one's self or as though you are watching your own experience from the outside. I think I have had couple of episodes of that: quite unnerving, and no, it wasn't recreational drug related. Anyway, you made it past the acute part without any really dramatic stuff so hang in there.
I wholeheartedly agree. I've dealt with depression off and on for 30 years. I was brought up to 'deal with it by the boot-straps', and struggled for years.
It was grinding me down to the point I couldn't take it anymore. I think there are a lot of people on here that are fortunate enough to have good genes that will never understand how debilitating depression can affect your life.
I finally talked to my physician about it and am on 10 mg of Lexapro. I can function again. It makes such a difference, especially in my low-light, Minnesota climate.
As my doc said, you would not deny a person meds for a hypertension problem. If I have a chemical imbalance in my brain, why should I be stigmatized?
I'm feeling positive for the first time in many months. I thank God everyday that he gave our scientists the knowledge to help those of us with depression. I mean every word of that who are naysayers.
The portion of patients who seem to be more prone to it a lot of times have neurological sensory damage. That is the primary problem and they overlook the cognitive behavioral or cause and effects of the existing physical illness and instead treat it as a mental one. SSRI's are completely off my list. I am not totally anti-SSRI as I know they help some people in a lot of cases but the public needs to be made aware of their real risk.
Serotonin Syndrome can come at any time during SSRI usage and usually is triggered by something as simple as having a cold and taking OTC cough medications. I even remember a Freeper going through it live on a thread a few years back. Serotonin Syndrome can kill. The danger however is doctor and patient as well as family ignorance which can and should be addressed before it is dispensed to the patient. I caught myself before I went into it. I sat with my wife through a week of hell while the doctors tried to have her placed in a state mental institute and all the time insisting she needed more SSRI's. Her Xanax she had been taken and the Atavan they gave her with the SSRI in the hospital is likely all besides the Good Lord that kept her from dying from it. She came home Amnesic for about 48 hours and with a fresh bleeder on the Cat Scan as well.
Mucking with brain chemistry is crazy considering how little we know...
I don't like having to take any med forever - it's just one more thing to have to depend on. But every now and then I skip a few days and can feel my old symptoms starting to return. Oh well, it is what it is...
Do the meds continue to work as well five or ten years down the road, or does their effectiveness wane after a while? If it does, what do you do then?
I have read about some people having to go up to a higher dose or switch meds after a number of years on one mad. So far (10+ years) so good with 10mg Prozac (Fluoxetine) for me. Like anything else, if a problem comes up I'll deal with it at that time and try to find a solution.
“But no one seems to want to invest the time or the effort. And when I suggest that we do, I am called (by other posters) laughable or uninformed.”
Maybe they are right. You do seem rather Pollyanish in your approach to “fixing” severely screwed up people by non-medical means. A lot of the mentally ill won’t admit that they even are and don’t seek help. Others can’t afford help and long-term care, even if it were available. The “system” in this country isn’t set up for long-term care. Partially because of the libs back in the 60’s saying throw open the doors of the institutions and leave all the crazies out onto the streets, they have their civil rights you know; that and “privacy rights”, thus allowing those crazies to roam the streets with you and I. Without meds, many of them would be roaming those streets as a danger to both themselves and others, such as the Northern Illinois guy.
You sound like Tom Cruise, like no meds should be used at all. This coming from a guy that I personally think is a tad addled in the brain himself. He could use some. Granted there has been overmedication (ritalin being one example as you say) in some areas. However, there again, the problem is that it is easier to pop a pill down a kid’s throat than deal further with a problem child. Who’s going to deal with the kid? In most families now both parents are working, and you can’t turn the clock back on that. The schools can’t do long-term therapy. Their mission is to teach, not be shrinks. So who, the State or Fed gov’t? If one could do like in the olden days and institutionalize the severely mentally ill, and not let them back out on the streets for a long time or ever if too far gone, that would work. But who would pay for these institutions?
I say bring back Boys (or Girls) towns for problem children, and indeed institutionalize the severely mentally ill. Boys/Girls Towns could be privatized or gov’t run; same with the mental institutions. My guess is these would have to be gov’t run, because if privately run, it would have to be based on grant monies from the gov’t, or somehow the profit motive would have to be satisfied. Hence probably gov’t run. Just about anything would be better than the system we have now, which is no system at all; just leave the crazies back on the streets, along with the severe alcoholics or druggies.
And the mechanism for involuntary (mandated) incarceration in mental institutions would have to be strengthened. No more of this having to let them out in 3 days routine. There must be a way to commit an out of control mental patient for more than just a few days or weeks. The laws on this (created by liberals) would need to be changed. We need new long-term care facilities, and I don’t care how they come about as long as it happens. Otherwise, the situation will remain status quo, and the crazies amongst us will continue to wreak havoc on our society and themselves.
“I think that coming down off some of these mades can induce violence. I was on Paxil for a while and when I went off, I got jumpy and VERY irritable — not violent, but in another psyche, I can see it leading there.”
Maybe that was your natural state you went back to and the meds were keeping you stable. When you went off of them, you went back to your natural state. Perhaps you should have stayed on Paxil, or tried another drug. It’s trial and error. Each person has their own individual experiences with certain drugs, and different ones have to be tried before you hit paydirt.
These are not drugs to play with, in amateur trial and error games. One wrong guess and you can go cuckoo for coco puffs.
when are these doodoo doctors and the fda going to wake up and realize that these pills are providing a totally false sense of peace...apart from God. There is a darn good reason why some people are depressed; alot of anger. Anything given to assuage that anger instead of honestly facing and letting go of it, is only going to cause it to grow stronger in the long run. That’s why so many of these mass shooters are on these drugs...the anger continues to build and eventually it comes out. The fhu.com has a tried and true be still download that really works for so many people. Simple and real and now being used to help military personell in overcoming battle stress.
“These are not drugs to play with, in amateur trial and error games. One wrong guess and you can go cuckoo for coco puffs”
Oh for heaven sakes, wise up. No one “plays” with drugs. The patient doesn’t make these drug choices. Highly trained doctors (such as trained psychiatrists) make those decisions. And even for them you can’t always hit on the right drug or combo of drugs right off as each individual is different in their mental and/or physical makeup. Professionals make these choices for their patients. Geez....
Spread Of 1918 Flu Pandemic Explained
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
No, it was the serotonin levels trying to find their level once more (aka withdrawal).
Yes, and these drugs stunt the growth of young people which can lead to increased psychological problems in those affected.
Everyone should send this to their Senators.
When I sent one of my links to my Senator, they called me from Washington.
It was liked they were shocked to find out this news. What a bunch of dummies in Washington, but then they receive so much money from the lobbyists, it is selective ignorance I feel.
http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/casualties.htm
My doctor said never to go off SSRI’s in the winter. I think this person at NIU going off his meds in winter probably contributed to his rampage. Wintertime is harder for me - short days, not much sunshine - going to work in the dark coming home in the dark. There have been years when I thought the month of February would never end. So, when I try to wean off my SSRI, I’ll be doing it in early summer.
Exactly. Sometimes you don't know how far down in the deep, dark pit you are, until you aren't.
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