
Penny-Arcade TV on chronic anxiety and antidepressants - Alex3917
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/pa-the-series/118/
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katovatzschyn
I took anti-depressants (and similar) after a suicide attempt and put into
ward. The emotion they took me to is not what I would say "anti-depressed." I
was still depressed. There was still anxiety. There was still the hunger for
suicide. What was done instead is a kind of "loss of caring." There would
still be that crushing darkness, but it would not drive me so much. There
would still be that crippling terror, never leaving, but it would not deter my
actions so much. Every night my friend would call to me again, but his voice
more quiet. Then come the side-effects.

I would not recommend this life to one who can avoid it. This was my private
hell and I would not return there willingly. It did not eliminate my despair.
Just me more dull and numb to it.

But maybe you are not like me.

~~~
gruseom
That sounds really hard. I'm glad you made it through. Sometimes the way
through is not very elegant. One muddles as best as one can.

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Alex3917
See also: Are Prozac And Other Psychiatric Drugs Causing The Astonishing Rise
of Mental Illness in America

[http://www.alternet.org/health/146659/are_prozac_and_other_p...](http://www.alternet.org/health/146659/are_prozac_and_other_psychiatric_drugs_causing_the_astonishing_rise_of_mental_illness_in_america)

~~~
pw0ncakes
It sounds like the problem here has more to do with irresponsible diagnosis
(which most of us would agree is a serious problem regarding mental illness)
than the drugs themselves. If someone has a manic reaction to antidepressants,
the response should not be to diagnose them as having bipolar disorder, and
then treat them as if it were the case, because it's unlikely that the person
in innately/biochemically bipolar. It's to try a different drug.

I'm not bipolar, and I've had a manic (or, much more likely, hypomanic)
reaction to a _vitamin_ (when I stopped using it, I was fine, but had done a
few really moronic things up to that point). It happens, and aggressive
diagnosis is not the solution.

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maqr
From their language, the seem surprisingly uneducated about drugs in general.

Also, I think the efficacy of SSRIs is still quite questionable. I'd love for
someone who really understands the statistics and medical scales to do the
comparison and tell us their opinion about Lexapro vs Placebo for depression
or anxiety disorders.

Note that Lexapro is the drug they're advocating, which is an SSRI, but there
are plenty of other anxiety drugs (like any benzo) which are clearly
effective.

~~~
pw0ncakes
This may not be what you're looking for, but I can vouch for Lexapro on
personal experience.

I had a bout of crippling panic attacks in the spring of 2008. I lost my job
because of this (I was a trader at a hedge fund). I had about 30 attacks in
the first 3 months.

It was obvious from the 3rd or 4th day on Lexapro that the drug was doing
_something_ : I had some mildly annoying but harmless side effects in the
first week or two-- sweating, "the yawns", tiredness, and weird visuals when
going to sleep.

After about a week on the SSRI, I began to have a panic attack while in the
park and something weird happened-- the attack just ended after 5 seconds, and
I felt no worse than if I'd been startled by a loud sound. The attacks became
milder and more manageable. Now I have about one per month-- unpleasant, but
not something that'd make me unemployable-- but none at any level of severity
approaching what I had before I started taking the drug.

Some of this improvement is due to lifestyle changes and increasing skill at
handling the problem, but a large fraction of the improvement is directly
attributable to Lexapro.

~~~
drinian
Zoloft stopped panic attacks for me after a similar series of absolutely
crippling panic attacks. It's about as close to normalcy as you can get on a
psychiatric drug -- also an SSRI like Lexapro, Prozac, etc. Reaction to each
SSRI varies by person and depending on genetic factors, oddly enough.

------
jdietrich
I have one issue with the widespread use of psychiatric drugs.

As laypeople, we readily recognise the social and cognitive basis of much of
what is called mental illness. We clearly see that when our friends are
overworked and in debt, they become anxious. We see people lose their job and
become depressed. Anecdotally, I struggle to recall a single instance of
anyone I know experiencing significant distress with no clear social or
cognitive reason.

As part of the medicalisation of our thoughts and emotions, we seem to have
discarded the notion that we personally can change how we feel, by changing
how we think and the way we live our lives. We have no model for how to think
about our emotions in the broader context of our lives without involving
someone with a certificate and a nice office.

To me it seems absurd that much of the medical establishment would regard the
unhappiness a recently bereaved person as a chemical imbalance or a symptom of
illness, but there are no shortage of references to the use of anti-
depressants to treat "bereavement related depression".

I can't speak for anything beyond my own experience, but I have been diagnosed
with a catalogue of mental illnesses by a variety of highly trained
professionals. It turned out that my life was just really crappy and I needed
to sort myself out. I felt hopeless because I really didn't have any reason to
hope. I lacked energy because I had nothing to do. I felt nervous and restless
because I was living in a shitty set of circumstances. A few significant but
simple changes to my lifestyle and mindset suceeded where endless "treatment"
failed.

It occurs to me that it is possible that we are treating symptoms without
addressing causes. We rarely treat physical pain with painkillers alone, but
usually act to resolve the cause of the pain wherever possible. It seems
illogical to me that someone can become depressed as a result of a specific
event in their lives, be prescribed antidepressants and continue to take those
drugs for many months or years, without anyone thinking to address the issue
that precipitated the negative thoughts and feelings in the first place.

I suggest that those advocating SSRIs as a cureall for anxiety and depression
take a closer look at the recent metastudies into their efficacy. From the
largest and most recent (JAMA. 2010;303:47-53):

""The magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medication compared with placebo
... may be minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or
moderate symptoms. For patients with very severe depression, the benefit of
medications over placebo is substantial.""

For all but the most severe depression, SSRIs are less effective than
sunbathing or jogging. Given the quite substantial risk of side effects,
especially amongst the young, I can't help but be dismayed at how widespread
SSRI use is.

Looking at the healthcare debate in the US, the elephant in the room is that
USians consume vastly more medicine than anyone else in the world but see no
real improvement in their health as a consequence. From my perspective as a
cynical Brit, USians seem to have an almost mystical faith in the power of
medicine and seem to have medicalised a dizzying array of things which most of
the rest of the world does not consider disease. British dentistry is often
the butt of jokes amongst USians and considered substandard, but in fact it is
of a very high quality. The difference is that British dental standards are
based on function rather than aesthetics. We tend to perceive American
dentistry as being vain and neurotic, the maxillofacial equivalent of spinning
rims. What we would consider artificially straight and white, many USians
would consider the lower bound of normal.

USians are literally bankrupting themselves on healthcare spending, but live
shorter lives than Cubans, who spend 1/25th what USians do but lead healthier
lifestyles. The United States has the world's highest rate of incapacity due
to mental illness and the fastest growth in the rate of mental illness,
despite prescribing more psychiatric medications than anywhere else in the
world. I invite the reader to draw their own conclusions.

~~~
jgg
>To me it seems absurd that much of the medical establishment would regard the
unhappiness a recently bereaved person as a chemical imbalance or a symptom of
illness

It doesn't seem so absurd when you realize that they make a lot of money that
way.

I agree with your post though. The marketing agencies for drug companies want
you to feel as though being uncomfortable for any amount of time means
something is wrong with you. It doesn't help that (in the United States at
least) there is a very large consumer culture which is based around an
intellectually-unhealthy ideal, which, I think, makes people deeply unhappy.
Thus, when people realize what is wrong with the world around them, they feel
extremely uncomfortable and are quickly herded into the category of "mentally
ill" rather than being allowed to face what is troubling them. Depression is
very much a fad disorder, like ADHD and Asperger's syndrome (much to the
dismay of people who suffer from them legitimately, no doubt).

------
wizard_2
I want to take this opportunity to share the Icarus Project, I found it a very
helpful place to discuss drugs (legal and not) mental illness and depression.
Their tagline "Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness". There was
a time when I felt... mad, and I can't tell you how much talking to people who
share in it helped.

I also want to mention while on the topic of drugs that exercise another
potent drug. Someone in a previous thread was downmodded (probably due to his
tone) when they brought it up, and I just want to voice that while it's not a
fix all solution, it can be used to help too.

<http://theicarusproject.net/>

------
jodrellblank
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1311484>

------
quellhorst
It appears that these guys are still depressed. Get out, get some sun and
exercise. That will work much better than antidepressants.

Citations:

Exercise is an Effective Antidepressant
[http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/mindandbody/a/exercisedep.h...](http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/mindandbody/a/exercisedep.htm)

Sunlight / Vitamin D and depression
[http://newfoundlandnews.blogspot.com/2008/01/sadness-
seasona...](http://newfoundlandnews.blogspot.com/2008/01/sadness-seasonal-
affective-disorder.html)

~~~
GeoffWozniak
That kind of flippant response is part of the reason depression and other
mental health problems are still widely misunderstood.

~~~
quellhorst
Can you elaborate?

~~~
chipsy
It is true that Vitamin D plays a major role in regulation of various systems,
and can help to stabilize mood. I take tons of the stuff myself.

That doesn't mean you should barf a "Vit D good" information packet on every
story about depression, though. Without taking the time to add context, it
looks rude and dismissive.

