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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Do Antidepressants Really Work?

chasingabee

chasingabee

Bluelighter
Joined
Dec 31, 2012
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inside a jar
My doctor has been offering to put me on antidepressants. After doing a bit of Googling about antidepressants, I have become doubtful as to whether they really work.

To start with, I read that there is a lot of publication bias with the results of clinical trial meaning pharmaceutical companies are mostly publishing the results of trials that give them the results they want. This give me a bad feeling right away, that there is kind of corruption.

Then heard about Irving Kirsch who did a meta analysis of all the clinical trials, Including the ones that were not published, and found negligible difference between the drug and placebo.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253608/

And there was another completely independent meta analysis by JAMA which came to very similar conclusions.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712503/

There’s also this video that is informative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zihdr36WVi4

Overall my conclusion is that they work for the severely depressed, but only because this group is less susceptible to the placebo effect, not because the drug works better for them.

What do you think about it? What is a good source of information so I can find out whether they work or not?
 
well they are subjective just like everything else
IMO they are not placebos by any means from a chemical stand point
but then again everyone has a different genetic structure so they can in fact not work for many
sure you read reviews of them saying oh it doesnt work or they do work but always read what people say with a grain of salt including myself
if you wanna try them and they work cool if not move onto something else
no one can tell you how you are gonna react the good shit is you can try something and if it doesnt work you can stop it and try something else its not like youre fucked for life
you can be lucky and have something work for you with little to side effects right off the bat but again you can spend a shit load of time doing trial and error

if you're personally are thinking of trying them dont read shit online think thats the worst thing to do
talk to a real doc and if you scripted something take it and forget about it and always maintain communication with your doc because in the end
we are not qualified docs to give you any type of advice
 
ps if you get something make sure you get some type of back up plan like benzos
i personally think the reason people give up is because you can in fact feel like complete dog shit but what people fail to realize is increased anxiety or side effects should be expected
due to your body trying to cope with the foreign dug you are introducing but it does eventually go away once your body adapts to the drug
thats why in many people it does in fact take time to feel anything
 
Hi there, SSRIs when administered chronically (many months) do help some people with major depression but they often times don't work or work negatively for people with other disorders, bipolar for example, it can send them into a mania.

Some people who do not have major depression or who even do have major depression but whose problem is not just a lack of serotonin are not helped by SSRIs or related treatments (MAOIs). Depression many times is simplified to lack of serotonin and this is not true for many cases. There seems to be different causes of the collection of symptoms that have been dubbed depression. Now that being said even if their problem is not a shortage of serotonin sometimes more serotonin can help them.

They do work for many people though, my main warning is that they can cause insomnia so for somebody who is sleepless these are not a good idea, it can take many months to get over the insomnia (and for SSRIs to begin to take full effect). Of course if you are tired and lethargic the extra energy can be a good thing. Their mechanism of action is much more complicated than just increasing serotonin in the synapse by blocking its reuptake. They do increase serotonin regardless of administered chronically but like I said it's not always the solution to depression, or even if it does help the symptoms it doesn't necessarily get at the root cause of the depression.

Care to tell us about your troubles? SSRIs might indeed work for you as they do a great many people, but it helps to know a bit about the person and what they really have (major depression?) to take a guess at the likelihood of antidepressant therapy being successful. It also helps narrow down what anti depressant you should use, which is important. Especially if you have insomnia.

Any questions are welcome. Also if you like looking up studies yourself rather than taking somebody's word for it (in the case of a doctor, it's good to be cautious because they might have a corrupt education) you should definitely use PubMed on NCBI.com.
 
It depends on your definition of works. I'vs struggled with MDD since age 16 (32 now) and tried many of the various different drugs. I also have Anxiety Disorder and OCD. Anti-depressants (ADs from here on out) can help but in my experience they don't cure the problem. My experience has been with all the different meds I've tried (sticking to SSRI/SNRIs here) some have severe side effects with pretty much all having at least some, some make depression worse, some make anxiety skyrocket, and some help marginally. Out of all the ADs I've tried, Prozac seems to be the best tolerated by my body and most effective if you can call it that. It basically helps me get on my feet, gives me some ground to stand on. It doesn't make me happy or cheerful but I'm not crying all the time or in bed all day either.

So YES they can work but how well varies from person to person. I seem to be medication resistant. Self medicated for many years with weed and now that I take opioid pain meds I find that those completely remove all depression symptoms as if it never was there. A pleasant side effect of the pain relief but not why I take them.

Good luck and I hope you find some relief from ADs or any other psych med you get. To me (my personal feeling, don't lash out at me for feeling like this anyone) serious deep debilitating depression can can be kinda like cancer except instead of knowing your gonna die in a given time frame you get to suffer your entire life wishing for death. Truly sorry if I offended anyone with that statement, it's just how I feel and I've lost hope in traditional AD treatment.

Best of luck.
 
They don't work for me. I have tried sertraline and bupropion but neither of them did anything good. They just made me jittery and stimulated.

I consider my xanax, pregabalin and antipsychotics more as antidepressants since they help me improve my quality of life.
 
I feel what you mean. The last time i was truly happy was when i was a little kid. If i stay sober for too long i become seriously depressed and suicidal. Therefore i will probably be drug dependent to some extend for the rest of my life.
 
i was prescribed venlafexine was on em 10 yrs and in my own personel opinion they didnt work for me im off them 2 yrs or so and am so much " happier" now plus i stopped using hard drugs i still have a smoke of weed and thats all i need i live in belfast northern ireland we need to get cannabis legalized here for medical and recreational purposes the cannabis prohabition has to end its just a plant just grows and if you shuld so happen to set it on fire there are some effects but thats not the same as drugs they tend to need chemical processsing lol
 
I tried SSRIs (Prozac) for a couple of months. I started feeling like I was tripping. Way too druggy for me. Plus it killed my sex drive. Now I'm on bupropion and it works for me. Other than a slightly stimulating effect, it doesn't really change my psyche/personality as far as I can tell. I am prone to non-severe depression and have been addicted to benzos, opiates, and alcohol in the past. This helps me stay sober...most of the time.
 
Prozac worked for me but fucked with my dick. I could still get it up no problem but felt like shit. If it wasn't for that I'd still probably be on it.
 
Memantine said:
I feel what you mean. The last time i was truly happy was when i was a little kid. If i stay sober for too long i become seriously depressed and suicidal. Therefore i will probably be drug dependent to some extend for the rest of my life.
Click to expand...
You're singing from my hymn sheet brother.
 
Short answer; no. SSRIs and SNRIs will cause more problems than they solve -- They're literally toxic. More reports on them are rising.
 
what is the price of happiness??? shit isnt unicorns and fairy dust
find what works plain and simple
 
Memantine said:
I feel what you mean. The last time i was truly happy was when i was a little kid. If i stay sober for too long i become seriously depressed and suicidal. Therefore i will probably be drug dependent to some extend for the rest of my life.
Click to expand...

Damn you touched a lot of nerves.
 
antidepressants with therapy may be more effective than either alone or none at all.

the problem with the conditions that these pills treat is that we have no definitive answer on what causes the depression, chronic depression, manic depression etc.. so these pills are a 'trial and error' when it comes to depression treatment.

it's if you're willing to see how you react to them and guinea pig the treatment in hopes that it'll help you in the long run.

however, picture how benadryl works on the common cold. it's not a cure, it's a mask for the symptoms we rather not deal with, but the only big difference with benadryl and SSRI's or SNDRI's etc is that the latter are working on a far more sensitive area in the brain which can make problems worse when one decides to come off, i.e SSRI w/d.

but obviously there's tapers for that but you'd still experience symptoms.

you just need to be ready to try different medications or defer to natural means of relief (which will be better in the long-run IMO).
 
It depends on whether the depression is caused by life factors or a chemical imbalance of sorts where you get depressed for no reason. If you have a shitty life then you are not going to feel happy no matter what you take. Also some anti-depressants seem to work better then others. I believe MAOI's like Parnate, Nardil or the selective at low doses MAO-B inhibitor Selegiline.The good thing about Selegiline is that in some countries like the US it comes in the form of a patch called Emsam which allows people to take higher doses of the drug which inhibit both MAO-A and B and as the cheese reaction occurs in the stomach you don't have to worry so much about avoiding certain foods. However i think that the old non selective MAOI's like Parnate may work better.

Personally i have found the Dopamine Norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor Bupropion to work well. It sort of wakes me up and makes my mood feel abit brighter. I have also found the Tricyclics Amitriptyline and Trimipramine to work pretty well.

I have never taken a SSRI but i have taken the SNRI Venlafaxine which was one of the worst drugs i have ever tried. Not only where the side effects hell but the withdrawals from it where some of the worst i have ever experienced. As i have Bipolar disorder i can't take any SSRI's or any SNRI's anymore. Doctors are even very wary of giving me even Bupropion sometimes and some also flat out refuse to prescribe Bipolar patients any Tricyclic even though i have never personally had a problem with them causing a manic switch.
 
I also am currently still thinking that they probably don't work.

I found a couple of more good articles on the subject suggesting they don't work, at least very well.

The first one is from Scientific American magazine
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antidepressants-do-they-work-or-dont-they/

The second one is by Bruce Levin and the article was originally published in Skeptic Magazine
http://brucelevine.net/depression-treatment-what-works-and-how-we-know/

It's a shame because I really want them to work. Does anyone know some good papers or articles that show that they work?
 
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