Extreme side-effects of antidepressants

Along these lines (overprescription, overdiagnosis, disease mongering) "Saving Normal" by Frances Allen may be a good read as well.

1. Serotonin is a very basic, very old transmitter found in all bilateral animals. Humans have two sites of serotonin-production, one in the body, one in the brain. 90% of serotonin resides in the body.

2. Serotonin in general regulates "activity". It affects hunger, gut-movement, sleep, cell-growth, mood, body-temperature, blood-pressure and many other things. Any drugs changing serotonin-levels also affect these areas, that is why there are so many adverse effects.

3. SSRIs help exactly one group of people: those who have too low levels of serotonin. When their serotonin is boosted, circuits in the brain like the connection between thoughts and emotions start to work properly, hence they get more in touch with themselves.

4. People who have too little serotonin can show the exact same symptoms like people whose serotonin levels way too high (!!). Prescribing SSRIs to those people will worsen their state and may even lead to life-threatening conditions.

5. The level of serotonin can be tested properly by exactly one method: laboratory blood/urine sampling, which costs a couple hundred dollars, but is available. These doctors generally also know about amino-acid therapy, which consists of nutritional supplements which help the body in manufacture the missing transmitter. This can lower the need for medication, but needs proper testing first.

6. People can have proper serotonin levels and still be sad/angry/depressed. The question still is which brain-circuit is malfunctioning. If the problem is the connection between emotions and thought, serotonin helps. If the malfunctioning circuitry concerns attention regulation [0], like with people who have a genetic disposition towards ADHD, then dopamine helps.

7. People can have all their neurotransmitters adjusted to proper levels and still not be perfectly well. We are talking about signalling inside mutable structures here. Changes in signalling affect the structure, changing the structure affects the signalling.

Fixing neurotransmitters makes someone able to use all of his brain. He still has to use it properly though, to get better.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontostriatal_circuit

""" if you suffer a psychotic breakdown, your odds of complete, treatment-free recovery are much, much better if you are treated in a third-world country that cannot afford psychotropic medication """

https://aeon.co/essays/treating-acute-psychosis-with-drugs-c...

Of course antidepressants can cause side-effects as do all other types of drug treatments. It's inevitable, medication effects are extremely complex and unpredictable as interaction with body systems covers a huge gamut of possibilities. Furthermore, most effects of drugs haven't studied even when they are known and a great deal more is not known than is known.

Also bear in mind that drugs in the form prescribed may not be the the chemical that produces the biggest therapeutic effect. This is the phenomenon of active metabolites which are often the drivers of favorable and unfavorable effects.

So we see how quickly these factors yield immense complexity and the reason behind the fact that drugs often have a huge array of side-effects common and rare.

BTW a side-effect occurring in 1% of recipients is considered a common adverse event. 0.1% is infrequent. Maybe 0.01% is getting rare, but definitely not implausibly drug-related.

The bottom line is that taking several drugs even one at a time for more than a few days means there's a surprisingly high probability of have an uncommon or rare side effect. It's happened to me a handful of times, including a couple of pretty serious reactions.

Interesting when I tell my physicians about these reactions. There's a certain look they get on their faces, like "what are you talking about? You're kidding me, that really didn't happen, did it?" Well, yes doctor, it really did, as though I wouldn't know a bad reaction when it's there or I just made the whole thing up.

This is perfectly consistent with what patients reported to me over the years. A long time ago I'd come to believe that people weren't making stuff up, unusual side-effects are ultimately an everyday reality among patients and all reports of AEs must be taken seriously, exactly my policy I put into practice.

Remember this little rule, it will save everyone a lot of trouble: any drug can cause any side-effect at any time.