Do SSRI's actually help you?

[whatson zo]

Thanks for all the replies guys. It seems like there might actually be some hope for me. Now I have another question, are all of you who are saying that they do work also prescribed a benzo along with it? I have noticed that many are prescribed both. I feel that if so, the benzos could possibly be solving your problems and not the SSRI. Just my .02.

 

[TheLostBoys]

If you're getting panic attacks in your sleep, that's bad........your doctor should prescribe 10mgs of Temazepam for bed time or 5mgs of Valium......benzos are a slippery slope, but then again, so are SSRI's.

Everyone knows I hate SSRI's.....I think they make some people worse. I know they help some people, but from everything I've heard & read I would say SSRI's help less than 50% of the public using them.

SSRI's are prescribed more than any other drug by doctors......the pharm companies push them like M&M's.

Just be careful & good luck on your journey towards an anxiety free life.

What you want to do is acknowledge the reason why you have anxiety, get to the root of it.

Exercise, yoga, eating healthy, etc.....all help. If you're getting anxiety attacks in your sleep, that's pretty severe......I'm assuming your going to sleep with anxiety & it over flows into your dreams.......like I said before, you need a benzo.

 

[whatson zo]

If you're getting panic attacks in your sleep, that's bad........your doctor should prescribe 10mgs of Temazepam for bed time or 5mgs of Valium......benzos are a slippery slope, but then again, so are SSRI's.

Everyone knows I hate SSRI's.....I think they make some people worse. I know they help some people, but from everything I've heard & read I would say SSRI's help less than 50% of the public using them.

SSRI's are prescribed more than any other drug by doctors......the pharm companies push them like M&M's.

Just be careful & good luck on your journey towards an anxiety free life.

What you want to do is acknowledge the reason why you have anxiety, get to the root of it.

Exercise, yoga, eating healthy, etc.....all help. If you're getting anxiety attacks in your sleep, that's pretty severe......I'm assuming your going to sleep with anxiety & it over flows into your dreams.......like I said before, you need a benzo.

Yeah, Ive been having anxiety attacks and sleep paralysis in my sleep since my junior year in high school. I know what's causing my anxiety and its not anything I can control or change. My Dr said he didn't want to prescribe me any benzos because he felt I was too young. He said he would normally have prescribed klonopin to an older person with my problems. I just don't understand why he's pushing SSRI's when I'm not that depressed. After the paxil messed me up he asked if I was more depressed or anxious and I said anxious so that's when he suggested buspar because that's "what its made for". Its useless.

 

[deos68]

imo ssris work but they are not for everyone
for me they didnt i tried zoloft and prozac the side effects outweighed the reward so i tossed them both
i have benzos in my arsenal but in all reality they are band aids well....ssri's are also band aids in a way they dont cure anything they help minimize the anxiety ,depression, panic attacks and everything else in between
anxiety has to be brought to the surface and faced head on there is no other way to combat it
if its not an underlying medical condition as much as i hate to say it ......it's all in your head....as cliche as it sounds its the truth
anxiety can do some crazy shit / make you feel crazy physical symptoms and at this point i have exp the majority of whats it capable of doing... it sure does suck
just remember the way you developed anxiety because you are not born with it unless it some extreme cases of mental illness is the same way you can suppress it and control it
i would suggest therapy especially CBT although some of it is comical there is a lot of cool shit you can learn from i would try that before popping pills left and right

but believe me when i say the real world is not gonna get easier as you grow up if you dont find a way to control your issues its only gonna get worse which in turn can escalate your anxiety and other issues into something you never wanna exp or see
i have been battling anxiety for around 9 yrs already but when all my shit started anxiety / panic attacks was unheard of
about a yr ago i finally decided to get help...i lost so many years that i will never get back but its better late than never i suppose goodluck

 

[Epiper888]

Go to a new doctor. If your doctor refused to prescribe medication cause your to "young" that's ridiculous. It's may not be life threading but panic attacks are terrible. You deserved to atleast have a benzo if needed.

 

[Foreigner]

SSRIs have helped me short term during major depressive episodes. You know, the ones where the hamster wheel in your mind has been going, and going, and going for so long that it feels like you've basically burned out your neurons and you're totally fucked? I've had a few of those due to impossible life circumstances, and SSRIs broke the cycle. I find that taking them for a month or so during a crisis is all that I need, then I quit. I realize that's outside of the stated efficacy profile... most people have to take it for a month before they see stable results. For me, it works a bit different.

I'm at a point now where SSRIs will never be a consideration again because I know the roots of my depressive states, both chemical and psychological. I know what to do when they happen. Back then, I was ignorant and needed the chemical crutch.

 

[deos68]

Go to a new doctor. If your doctor refused to prescribe medication cause your to "young" that's ridiculous. It's may not be life threading but panic attacks are terrible. You deserved to atleast have a benzo if needed.

i agree no one has ever died from a anxiety/panic attack benzos should be used to help calm it down when times get rough no different from taking tylenol for a headahe for example hell that is a perfect way to view benzos used only when needed
i can see what the big hype is about using benzos and shit if i didnt have the will power im sure by now i would have been addicted to them
benzo's are not a game by any means although they provide relief they can also mess you up even more
talking about benzo withdrawal which can make your anxiety attacks, panic attacks feel like a walk in the park

 

[SixBuckets]

No, SSRIs do not help unless you are seeking near inability to ejaculate, flat affect (emotional state), suicidal/homicidal ideation, and no relief (actually, slightly a *negative* response when compared with placebo) with respect to depression. The people for whom SSRIs work just think they do. Remember, the placebo effect is all in your head, though it is also real.

The symptoms of depression and anxiety are all in your head. Literally everything we experience goes through our brains. Why do you think that your brain telling you your anxiety has reduced is less legit than your brain telling you that you had anxiety in the first place?

SSRIS and SNRIs work for some people, not for others. I found better relief from SNRIs re: anxiety, but I had to go through a few SSRIs that didn't do anything before I found something that did. Unfortunately, trial and error and side effects are part of the package when it comes to improving mental health with medication.

 

[Mycophile]

When I wasn't on the proper dosage of SSRIs things were happening in my brain that just SHOULDN'T be occurring.

I had such a severely heightened fight or flight response in normal situations like eating in public that couldn't in any way be rationalized away as being caused by anything other than not being on the correct dosage of SSRIs.

Come 2 months later when I got on the right dosage of SSRIs and those problems no longer occurred at all along with a cessation of the severe depression I'd been feeling.

To call the fact that these symptoms started occuring as soon as I was off my SSRI and ceased again once I got back on a "placebo" with 100% certainty when you weren't in my mind or body in the first place is borderline insulting.

I guess it shouldn't matter to me what people think but it wouldn't bug me if people said they are only placebo in like 85% of cases but to STATE PLAINLY that you are SURE that they are placebo 100% OF THE TIME and want to be taken seriously is just a bit much.

SSRIS wouldn't be prescribed at all anymore if they had ZERO effectiveness and NEVER EVER helped anyone.

I don't think any studies ever proved that and going from saying more than 50% MIGHT be placebo to 100% ALWAYS are placebo is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[CfZrx]

THC may be bad for this hopeless loser feeling i've been having, but i can't quit. i'm absolutely 100% hooked. maybe this ssri thing could be the way?

 

[Mysterie]

srsly? what if you do 30 mins of exercise a day instead of getting baked?

its probably better for you to smoke weed than take an ssri.

but i recommend not smoking weed in general if you have depression/anxiety. once you realise the affect it has on your psyche that is enough for most people to stop, that and when it stops being fun at all.

 

[CfZrx]

I think my addiction to weed is strong this year due to potentiating effect on opiates. Ever since I tapered about 120mg, I've found weed chases the fever away as I adjust to my current 45mg daily (plus kratom) dose. I am trying to slow my thc intake. I exercise about 17 minutes 5.5 days a week, then I am bored I think looking for a new job has me down lately, because I know damn well that my resume looks shitty As soon as I land a better job, I think I will feel more secure and be better equipped to lessen my thc habit.

 

[《Plasticity》]

I can't seem to find the thread in OD that had a good number of studies quoted, seems to have been phased out. Because I'm a lazy fuck I'll just post this. If anyone questions that other SSRI's haven't been shown to have similar results I'll do my best to find those when I have more time. The efficacy of SSRI's for the treatment of anxiety is the subject I'm speaking on, not depression, as this is relevant to the OP.

NSFW:

Our group of researchers at Wayne State University and the Harvard Medical School analyzed all clinical trials examining the benefit of the SSRI paroxetine compared to placebos in the treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) or panic disorder across all trials sponsored by the drug's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). According to GSK, 12 clinical trials have been done, although four of them were not published in medical journals. (see why in the last sentence of the next paragraph). We examined how much improvement individuals in these studies made on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety, one of the most frequently used measures of anxiety symptoms. The scale has a maximum score of 56 points. Higher scores represent more severe symptoms of anxiety. At the beginning of the trials, the average scores in each sample were between 19 and 26 points.

We found that during these relatively short trials of 8 to 12 weeks, the average improvement for individuals given paroxetine was 11.1 points, and 8.8 points for individuals given placebo. That is, the drug provided an average benefit over placebo of only 2.3 points on a 56-point scale, and the improvement for individuals given placebo matched 79 percent of the improvement for individuals given the drug. The benefit of the drug was lower in the unpublished trials, indicating that the published studies may have overestimated the drug's effectiveness.

Our study is the first large-scale analysis of an SSRI compared to placebo in the treatment of anxiety; previous analyses have focused on the treatment of depression. Although our study is limited to only one medication, previous studies have found that all second-generation antidepressants have comparable effectiveness in treating depression.(that study)

Many people report experiencing a great deal of benefit from antidepressants for their anxiety. However, because individuals given placebos experience a similar benefit that was almost 80 percent as effective, most of their improvement is not due to the specific ingredients in the drugs. Notably, people who receive placebos fare much better than those given no treatment at all, such as individuals on waiting lists to be enrolled in the clinical trials. These findings indicate that taking action to enroll in a treatment program and participating in some type of intervention may be therapeutic in itself. The belief that an individual is receiving treatment (even if that treatment is as simple as a daily sugar pill) is a major component of symptom relief. The specific chemicals in the drugs may be less responsible for the improvement, and these drugs come with risks.

Psychotherapyis another treatment option for individuals suffering from anxiety. It does not carry the antidepressant-related risks such as the side effects and withdrawal effects and a recent study found that 75 percent of patients prefer therapy over psychiatric medications.7 Short-term studies have shown comparable effectiveness between antidepressants and psychotherapy. However, longer comparisons show a clear superiority for psychotherapy over antidepressants.8,9Psychotherapy, when conducted properly, is aimed at not only providing support and relieving symptoms, but also at helping individuals to develop and practice skills to prevent future occurrences of similar symptoms. This skill development is absent with medication intervention and may be part of the reason for psychotherapy's long-term superiority as a treatment.

Our study demonstrates that paroxetine provides only a modest benefit in treating anxiety. We believe that this benefit is not large enough to justify SSRI use for anxiety, given the risks associated with the medication. For individuals looking to take control of their anxiety, it is important to understand the limitations of antidepressants and to know that other options are available. Talk with your doctor about psychotherapy and other treatment options that could be well suited to you and your

https://www.anxiety.org/how-effective-are-antidepressants-treating-anxiety <~~~ Taken from this. All studies referenced here.

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Great job completely twisting my words, to the point that it's completely irrelevant to the point I was making. SSRI's have been shown to be effective for the treatment of severe depression (Although completely ineffective for mild to moderate depression ), so I would never say SSRI's help no one. This thread is about SSRI's for anxiety , and the studies have shown that the placebo effect is the primary cause of relief in these cases. The studies that were conveniently not published by the pharmaceutical companies were so bad that they never saw the light of day, suggesting that they may have even done worse. The studies that were published only show an average of 4% benefit over placebo. With a percentage that low it is more likely that there were 4% more people susceptible to the placebo effect of SSRI's in that group over the sugar pill group, rather than SSRI's are 4% better than placebo.

Psychotherapy has not only been shown to be just as effective in the short term, but drastically more effective long term. This doesn't mean just showing up to a therapists office, it means actually using the techniques provided in the outside world. It takes work to beat anxiety, nothing is gonna solve it for you. Not a pill, not a therapist (if you're not willing to put in the work). Beating depression and anxiety is clearly more complicated than tweaking serotonin levels, that much is obvious.

I already said that the results of placebo are just as valid as those of medications that have been shown to work. How that translates to nobody finds relief from SSRI's, you tell me. I trust the available studies over the word of someone with no background in pharmacology yet still insists on speaking for everyone else, despite the available data showing otherwise. I didn't want to continue posting in this thread as I didn't want to discredit those that are susceptible to the placebo effect, there are much better options with less side-effects though, I just had to clear that up for you and provide at least some data backing up the point I was making.

 

[Dresden]

I'm wasn't trying to offend anybody who loves SS(N)RIs or who is helped by them, it's just that I personally (as you can probably tell) can't stand them. And I don't like Wellbutrin any better. It gave me a seizure and is NOT recreational, no matter that it is a cathinone of sorts. The N-tert-butyl functional group apparently destroys any positive recreational activity it might have otherwise had.

 

[Mycophile]

I can't seem to find the thread in OD that had a good number of studies quoted, seems to have been phased out. Because I'm a lazy fuck I'll just post this. If anyone questions that other SSRI's haven't been shown to have similar results I'll do my best to find those when I have more time. The efficacy of SSRI's for the treatment of anxiety is the subject I'm speaking on, not depression, as this is relevant to the OP.

NSFW:

https://www.anxiety.org/how-effective-are-antidepressants-treating-anxiety <~~~ Taken from this. All studies referenced here.

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Great job completely twisting my words, to the point that it's completely irrelevant to the point I was making. SSRI's have been shown to be effective for the treatment of severe depression (Although completely ineffective for mild to moderate depression ), so I would never say SSRI's help no one. This thread is about SSRI's for anxiety , and the studies have shown that the placebo effect is the primary cause of relief in these cases. The studies that were conveniently not published by the pharmaceutical companies were so bad that they never saw the light of day, suggesting that they may have even done worse. The studies that were published only show an average of 4% benefit over placebo. With a percentage that low it is more likely that there were 4% more people susceptible to the placebo effect of SSRI's in that group over the sugar pill group, rather than SSRI's are 4% better than placebo.

Psychotherapy has not only been shown to be just as effective in the short term, but drastically more effective long term. This doesn't mean just showing up to a therapists office, it means actually using the techniques provided in the outside world. It takes work to beat anxiety, nothing is gonna solve it for you. Not a pill, not a therapist (if you're not willing to put in the work). Beating depression and anxiety is clearly more complicated than tweaking serotonin levels, that much is obvious.

I already said that the results of placebo are just as valid as those of medications that have been shown to work. How that translates to nobody finds relief from SSRI's, you tell me. I trust the available studies over the word of someone with no background in pharmacology yet still insists on speaking for everyone else, despite the available data showing otherwise. I didn't want to continue posting in this thread as I didn't want to discredit those that are susceptible to the placebo effect, there are much better options with less side-effects though, I just had to clear that up for you and provide at least some data backing up the point I was making.

Sorry man you seem pretty angry.

I'm not trying to piss you off but you SEEMED to be saying that SSRIs don't help anyone cause that's what I THOUGHT Dresden was saying.

But when did I "insist on speaking for everyone else"??

I thought it was you and Dresden who were doing that when I thought you were saying that SSRIs don't help anyone.

It doesn't matter to me that I have no backrground in psychopharmacology I won't question MY OWN EXPERIENCE that my own anxiety (not just depression) has been helped by SSRIs or let others convince me that my own experiences aren't legit.

That's all I'm saying...that I thought you and Dresden were saying that those who feel they were helped by them were in fact not any more helped by them than if they were sugar pills.

Not to mention new studies are always being done. Who's to say tomorrow a new study couldn't come out find the opposite to be true?

I know my own experience, and I don't think it was placebo, and that is really all that matters to me so it upset me that I felt others were trying to say that anyone thinks they were helped by an SSRI (for anxiety) is really just being duped.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

They help a wide variety of people, and a lot of people, yes. You will be hard-pressed to find people, especially in this sub-forum and not to mention in the site at all, who have had good experiences with SSRIs.

They're given as a first-line treatment because they're very safe (unless one takes other psychtropics, and usually interactions aren't too severe), they have numerous clinical trials to back up their efficacy, not to mention that they have well-documented action which is generally highly associated with a healing impact on the parts of the brain which may need such activity to have a healthy mind, and they treat multiple problems at once - anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc. I'm sure I forgot other reasons.

They worked for me for a while, but eventually just started being effective for anxiety, and not to a great extent. Sure, I don't doubt that MAOIs may work better overall, but one has to change a lot to be able to tolerate them (a strict diet). I don't have a professional opinion, but I tend towards thinking MAOIs are under-prescribed. But a doctor has to feel confident that you'll abide by the diet (because despite the inflated warnings about diet, interactions can, and have been, deadly).

TCAs are sometimes used, but they're not for people who might be suicidal. They're too easy to overdose on.

Effexor is an SNRI which can be pretty helpful as far as an anti-depressant which is prescribed during abstinence from an opiate addiction, because of down-stream action. Mirtazepine and lamictal are also anti-depressant meds for someone who has had SSRIs/SNRIs not work.

I'm sure i don't know the whole situation, but I'm pretty confident that your doctor holds your health as a priority.

Benzos can be abused, are almost unreal as to how hard they are to discontinue, and don't provide the "brain-nurturing", or neurotrophic, effect as I've read SSRIs provide. Abusing benzos is a very unintelligent thing to do, because while it can be prescribed, and therefore it isn't on the level that almost unilaterally illegal drugs such as heroin are, if you abuse it, it will spike your tolerance.

Imagine having to withdraw off of a giant benzo habit - having to withdraw because you take a months supply in a week, and/or having no one prescribe it to you because your habit has ramped up so high and that "special" doctor decides not to give it to you anymore or retires or something.

Some people find themselves being prescribed 10mg/day of alprazolam, then their doctor stops practicing and they can't find anyone to give them that much. Terrible insomnia, panic attacks to the point of feeling choked, bodily pain, and a cornucopia of fears then become the norm. SSRIs aren't easy to get off of, but many will tell you that compared to even tapering a benzo, it's not that horrible.

The brain takes a while to heal from using benzos daily, too. It can take years before the PAWS begins to settle down.

I guess, given my response to medications, I might be hypocritical in offering this advice, but I gave SSRIs/other antidepressants a fair run for my anxiety - at least several weeks.



.

 

[whatson zo]

Has anyone had any experience with 'pristique' **spelling might be off** one of my friends said that his doctor put him on it a few months ago and that it has changed his life. Don't quote me but I think he said it wasn't an SSRI but something new? Any input would be great

 

[JessFR]

I'm sure SSRI's help some people, so far though I haven't seen them help me or anyone I know.

I have however seen SNRI's be quite effective for both me and others, usually being put on them after SSRI's didn't work.

 

[whatson zo]

I'm sure SSRI's help some people, so far though I haven't seen them help me or anyone I know.

I have however seen SNRI's be quite effective for both me and others, usually being put on them after SSRI's didn't work.

Did the SNRI help You more for anxiety or depression?

 

[JessFR]

Depression, although my anxiety was never as bad as my depression.