Quote from: Mr Psychologist on June 21, 2015, 09:50:24 AM

Quote from: Daniel on June 21, 2015, 09:20:17 AM

Quote from: Mr Psychologist on June 21, 2015, 07:32:37 AM

Fluoxetine is medicine, despite the scaremongering around it. You just don't use it as a catchall drug to any and all patients especially not those under the ages of 18-21 in the same way that you don't put someone on insulin if they don't have diabetes.

Psychiatry in the US is deeply flawed, especially when it comes to depression. SSRI's like Prozac can be helpful for some people, but the problem is that they take quite a while to start working, and once they do start to work, they only work a short time before the drug starts to lose its effect and thus the patient will usually be told they need an a dosage increase.

The problem with these drugs is that they don't actually increase the amount of serotonin in the brain, they simply stop the reuptake of serotonin so that your brain thinks there is more, but that serotonin eventually becomes depleted and the patient will require a higher dose to get a the same effect.

There is also some research that SSRIs are effective, but they are only as effective as placebo. To me, it just doesn't seem logical to take something with so many side effects (like the possibility of increased aggression and suicidality in some people) when the only positive is that it's maybe as effective as taking a sugar pill.

Really the problem is rooted in the philosophy of current medicine, we treat people and diseases as if we were broken machines, focusing only on the "broken part" rather than looking at the whole person and trying to figure out why this person is depressed in the first place. There are non pharmaceutical ways of increasing neurotransmitters like serotonin in the brain without using brain altering drugs like SSRIs which are dangerous and ineffective.

Indeed, flawed is putting it kindly imo.

SSRIs are reasonable as a stopgap treatment, but it is just putting a plaster over the wound rather than sorting out the issue at hand. What I've seen to be most effective is combination treatment, where a therapist/psych/counsellor of some kind (Depends on the problem) is using a talking therapy in conjunction with a prescription. The drugs pull them out of a nosedive and then the therapy itself helps them fly normally again <.<

I don't agree with how they are happy to prescribe them willynilly, it shouldn't be 'Sad? Have some SSRIs!' but that seems to be how it goes in the states. It's not quite so problematic in the UK but instead you have atrocious waiting lists and 3-4 shrinks trying to manage 100+ patients.

A lot of it depends on the severity of the depression, people with mild depression probably don't need medication at all and they simply need someone to help them through their difficulties, people with MDD are the ones who will benefit from medical treatments (with the therapy) for obvious enough reasons <.<

There are a few newer classes of drugs that are a bit more up to date than the SSRIs and Clozapines that used to be used quite heavily and they aren't quite as bad. Prozac isn't great but it doesn't do anyone any favours that it's being made out to be the devil in pill form.

You wanna talk about willynilly prescriptions? ADD/ADHD medication is wildly overprescribed to kids who are just being kids, the fucking drug companies are in bed with the doctors and pushing their pills every which way they can.
Also on a somewhat related note, I'm on Prozac, am I going to die?

Indeed it is, ADD/ADHD are both very real but the number of people who have it and require medication to combat it is far lower than the prescription rates would imply. Then you have the whole abuse of the drug as a cognition aid among students which further adds to the fun.

Hmm I don't think that is likely, you are being monitored by your doctor whilst on it right? Or at least some form of professional?

Quote from: Mr Psychologist on June 22, 2015, 03:35:35 AM

Hmm I don't think that is likely, you are being monitored by your doctor whilst on it right? Or at least some form of professional?

Damn I'll have to try something else then

<.<

Perhaps a shrink >.>