Thanks for changing the senseless title in the submission.
Calling for a new approach to depression
101–110 of 155 posts
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#102There seems to be an increasing number of non-academic articles, essays and books that are expressing the idea that the Serotonin hypothesis of depression is flawed. It seems like the drug industry just picked up this idea in the 70s and has been running with it (to the bank) ever since Anecdotally, I have come to believe that SSRIs have a temporary mood-altering effect, possibly combined with a placebo effect that w…
> So, I guess that makes me complicit in all this too. No, that makes the salespeople, and your bosses at that communications company, complicit. We're just as neutral and tool-like as the computers we program.
This argument is dangerous.
You can extend that to any point of the chain, salespeople can be considered as just neutral and tool like as programmers and the blame shifted up ad infinitum.
While I don't think that he was complicit in this case (maybe the thought that what he was doing could have bad repercussions never went through his head, I don't know...), if you know that you're writing a program that will be used to calculate a way to kill the biggest number of people in a terrorist attack, would you still claim that you're not complicit because your boss that is paying you are the one complicit?
If you don't know what are the uses of the program, I think that you can claim that, but if you know, definitely you're being complicit, even if you're being paid or working under orders (and not under duress).
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost all antidepressants list the increase of suicide risk as a side effect, which is frightening. Zoloft for example [1]: > An increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults (aged 18 to 24 years) with major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders has been reported with short-term use of antidepressant drugs. [1] https://www.drugs.com/sfx/zoloft-side-ef…
Like all side-effect warnings I'm pretty sure the warnings about increased suicide risk are only added after the drugs have been on the market for a while (and having accumulated a few lawsuits). As with the generic 'this product may contain nuts' warnings on food these smack of post-hoc ass-covering to me. While my scepticism of 'alternative' medicine, magical thinking and general woo-woo is as strong as ever, my ex…
"Science-based" is such a meaningless weasel adjective. Either you have evidence or you have a nice-sounding story....but the latter has nothing to do with science properly understood.
Sorry for your loss.
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#104This explanation does not work for all types of depression. There are people who have wonderful lives, fulfilling jobs, happy families, who are still depressed. We need to be more careful in our language, the word depression has become overused, much like the drugs used to treat it.
That's how I've often described it before. Feeling like shit when your life is terrible is normal. Feeling like shit when your life is awesome is not. The problem is that the pill often works regardless of why you feel like shit.
> The problem is that the pill often works regardless of why you feel like shit.
Why is that a problem, if you're not a Luddite or Puritan?
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So, I guess that makes me complicit in all this too. No, that makes the salespeople, and your bosses at that communications company, complicit. We're just as neutral and tool-like as the computers we program.
This argument is dangerous. You can extend that to any point of the chain, salespeople can be considered as just neutral and tool like as programmers and the blame shifted up ad infinitum. While I don't think that he was complicit in this case (maybe the thought that what he was doing could have bad repercussions never went through his head, I don't know...), if you know that you're writing a program that will be use…
If the program's user-to-be is a customer instead of someone in the same company? Sure.
I would also gladly write a program used to calculate a way to kill the biggest number of terrorists in a missile strike, and that has much less potential to be illegal (thus monumentally costly, and thus wholly counterproductive ... but again that's the businesspeople's concern).
And your argument is dangerous, by ignoring the ultimate authority+responsibility of any company's leadership and investors.
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#106I am disenhearted by the apparent pseudo-scientific thinking in the comments on this article, and how it'll "be better if you just go workout and eat better", which might work for some people, but not for everyone. If there was a scientific study about changing life habits to stop depression, I'd bet that it would have the same amount of effectiveness or even less than SSRIs. I myself have been "miraculously" cured f…
There are many, many studies on changing life habits (working out) as a methodology to treat depression. It is actually _as effctive_ as SSRI's, and MORE effective for a longterm treatment for depression.*
However, _not all treatments work for everyone_. Certain SSRI's work for some and not others. This also holds for exercise.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26978184 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3674785/
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#107I am disenhearted by the apparent pseudo-scientific thinking in the comments on this article, and how it'll "be better if you just go workout and eat better", which might work for some people, but not for everyone. If there was a scientific study about changing life habits to stop depression, I'd bet that it would have the same amount of effectiveness or even less than SSRIs. I myself have been "miraculously" cured f…
There are many, many studies on changing life habits (working out) as a methodology to treat depression. It is actually _as effctive_ as SSRI's, and MORE effective for a longterm treatment for depression.* However, _not all treatments work for everyone_. Certain SSRI's work for some and not others. This also holds for exercise. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26978184 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…
SSRI/SNRI and Life style changes are not mutually exclusive, nor should they be.
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#108There seems to be an increasing number of non-academic articles, essays and books that are expressing the idea that the Serotonin hypothesis of depression is flawed. It seems like the drug industry just picked up this idea in the 70s and has been running with it (to the bank) ever since Anecdotally, I have come to believe that SSRIs have a temporary mood-altering effect, possibly combined with a placebo effect that w…
My partner, mother and sister take ssri's. This is my mental model for them and the depression it treats.
1) I see depression as the relevant neurological area of the brain learning to get too good at paying attention to negativity. (Overfitting to associating things with bad feelings, outcomes etc)
2) serotonin is a key chemical in the process of learning which I model as changing the way we associate emotions with situations, things etc.
3) by taking ssri's you provide the brain with an excess of serotonin which increases the capacity to learn new emotional associations provided you are exposed to those situations and positive feelings / outcomes.
In this way, I believe (based only on my own reading and more as a thought aid than anything else) that treating the checmical aspect of depression is only viable if you treat the environmental aspect simultaneously.
So just taking ssri's won't work. You need a good, safe, supportive environment to learn to be positive in again.
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#109> We need to feel we belong. We need to feel valued. We need to feel we’re good at something. We need to feel we have a secure future. And there is growing evidence that our culture isn’t meeting those psychological needs for many – perhaps most... This (emphasized) is what I think is causing my increasing anxiety and depression. I look around at people, talking loudly, showing off, taking selfies, buying expensive c…
Same here. One of the most disturbing scenes I'm witnessing like every night is couple of homeless people sleeping in front of the church while each morning there are these noble ignorants walking around them who even call them selves Christians..
Anxiety is just another term for caring too much in some cases (This was mentioned here on HN last time I was reading similar discussion).
Re: Calling for a new approach to depression
#110There seems to be an increasing number of non-academic articles, essays and books that are expressing the idea that the Serotonin hypothesis of depression is flawed. It seems like the drug industry just picked up this idea in the 70s and has been running with it (to the bank) ever since Anecdotally, I have come to believe that SSRIs have a temporary mood-altering effect, possibly combined with a placebo effect that w…
My mother suffers from depression and is medicated already for quite some time. Every year when autumn comes her condition gets worse and she ends up in hospital for few weeks where they change her medication and let her recover just to experience the same during the next year. What's especially stunning to me is the reaction of my father and my family who instead to provide her with support and peaceful environment just sends her to hospital instead.
From my perspective this all seems to be caused by the lifestyle she lives and her immediate surroundings - she's like under constant pressure to behave the way the rest of the ppl expect from her and she cares too much about what other ppl think about her. Another cause which I think is quite relevant is that she doesn't have much friends or hobbies of her on own so she's too dependent on my father who mostly cares for himself.
I'm trying to talk to my larger family about this problem but most of the time they just dismiss my claims about her not having a good life, cause they don't want to make more of a drama by talking to my father to change his habits - they see it like everything is ok and the problem is with my mother who is just mentally ill. This is escalating as I'm slowly getting more and more reluctant to even talk to my farther, sister and the rest of the people who don't see this as a problem. I'm even thinking of translating articles like this so they can read this and possibly understand that's not everything is about drugs. Any ideas of what can I do are welcome as this is the source of my depression and anxiety for quite some time.