Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

med.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 339 posts

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#311

Post by jjeaff »

Valakas_ wrote: post #259
jjeaff wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Just that we shouldn't recognize that depression can be a chemical issue because that doesn't help us fix the problem? Are you saying that anti-depressants don't work? So if depression is more about mental models, life choices, and drive and whatever, why do so many people suffer from depression in cycles? There is little change from one day to the next, and yet, many pe…

There can be many reasons for that and most have nothing to do with life choices or "mental models" whatever that means. * Trauma triggers and unprocessed/unconscious trauma. You'd be surprised how common this is. People who grew up in neglectful or abusive homes tend to believe there's something wrong with them and that their childhood was fine. So when life feels like shit, like there's no point, and it's only suff…

>Chemicals in the brain indeed, change from one day to another. And maybe the day they feel depressed is when they are seeing things more realistically and crash with that realization.

So, you think that chemical changes in the brain can affect how realistically one perceives their situation, but a chemical change that causes one to feel depressed is not something that happens? That doesn't seem like a logical conclusion.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#312

Post by jjeaff »

maxwell86 wrote: post #278
jjeaff wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Just that we shouldn't recognize that depression can be a chemical issue because that doesn't help us fix the problem? Are you saying that anti-depressants don't work? So if depression is more about mental models, life choices, and drive and whatever, why do so many people suffer from depression in cycles? There is little change from one day to the next, and yet, many pe…

What they are trying to say is that depression pills are as helpful as vitamin supplements are for sports. If you happen to be a top athlete that’s just not getting enough vitamins, the supplements might help a bit (not as much as correcting the diet though). If you are a couch potato, you might have a Vitamine imbalance, and the supplements might correct it, but the supplements won’t turn the couch potato into a top…

I think we have a lot of double blind clinical trials that show that anti-depressants do work. Not with super high success rates, but higher than vitamin supplementation.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#313

Post by jjeaff »

JSavageOne wrote: post #282
jjeaff wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Just that we shouldn't recognize that depression can be a chemical issue because that doesn't help us fix the problem? Are you saying that anti-depressants don't work? So if depression is more about mental models, life choices, and drive and whatever, why do so many people suffer from depression in cycles? There is little change from one day to the next, and yet, many pe…

Anti-depressants do not cure depression, they only temporarily relieve it. And they eventually stop working as one inevitably gets desensitized to them.

Sure, but that just further affirms my point that some types of depression are simply chemical.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#314

Post by jjeaff »

neuroma wrote: post #266
jjeaff wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Just that we shouldn't recognize that depression can be a chemical issue because that doesn't help us fix the problem? Are you saying that anti-depressants don't work? So if depression is more about mental models, life choices, and drive and whatever, why do so many people suffer from depression in cycles? There is little change from one day to the next, and yet, many pe…

Okay how about a new analogy: Your web app malfunctions, and a diagnostic sweep suggests the code is compromised. It's cloud hosted and open source. You're part of a team and see various recent revisions that could have exposed the app to malicious use. Furthermore your cloud provider is upgrading their hardware. Your app has to come offline whilst it's patched. Its a critical service for some clients who are houndin…

If someone tells me there is an electrical imbalance with the computer, then I will know we need to fix the computer, rather than the software that runs on it.

with your engine oil analogy, it seems like you are agreeing that brain chemistry is an important part of good mental health, just not the only one.

So if all the other parts of good mental health are in order, that leaves brain chemistry, hormones, etc. As the problem.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#316

Post by eru »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #171
eru wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only it won't last and it will the "yeah, I guess I'm feeling better"-level of improvement. Who says it won't last? Most depressions actually do get better by themselves. How do you think humanity has survived so far? (Most, but not all. And even if it eventually gets better without meds, there was still a lot of suffering.)

It's quite possible humanity has survived because most people never get depressed. You need to be quite clear about definitions to have a meaningful conversation on this.

Maybe. So please ignore the part where I speculate about evolution, if you want to.

Empirically, most clinical depressions get better by themselves today.

Similarly, most alcoholics improve by themselves.

(Of course, effective treatment is still useful!)

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#317

Post by xapata »

birksherty wrote: post #289
xapata wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Thus we describe that experience as mental illness.

Why is wanting to stop pain and trauma is illness and wanting to continue in more of that useless suffering is normal? I am not talking about privileged here but most people who struggle whole life in world.

Because if suicide were typical, humanity wouldn't exist. Mental illness is merely abnormality, not necessarily something ethically wrong or illogical given one's a priori beliefs.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#318

Post by xapata »

birksherty wrote: post #287
xapata wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mental illness is when option B in this example seems preferable to small inconveniences and embarrassments, and when one doesn't think of things like, (C) forget about it and go hang out with some friends.

Life is full of small inconveniences and big ones time to time. It's not just one small one. So wanting to stop all that should not be considered illness, but forcing to continue the pain and trauma should be. Life is ultimately a meaningless thing, and most people suffer for it. Some people are privileged and they decide what is illness and what is not based on their own life. One has to work 9-5 whole life that slo…

You're just arguing the semantics of "illness". Call it atypical thought if you prefer.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#319

Post by serverlessmom »

mysecretaccount wrote: post #122
serverlessmom wrote: post #108

Hey! I didn't under go SAINT TMS specifically, but I have undergone TMS therapy. Reading this article I'm not sure how different what I received actually is compared to SAINT, but TMS absolutely changed my life. I was referred to TMS after a rash of different medications and years of talk therapy fell short on relieving the worst of my symptoms. Many of the benefits the patients in this article discuss are ones I rec…

I have some questions if you don't mind: Was it expensive? Are there any downsides? Do you think TMS is, like psychedelic therapy, potentially useful for people without depression (i.e. the "betterment of well people")?

Hi! TMS is at a baseline very expensive. Luckily(hah, sort of) because I had both suffered terrible side effects with several medications and I carry a sustained diagnosis from a very young age that was documented as being massively detrimental to my ability to function, my insurance was willing to cover the treatment. The head coordinator of the program actually advocated very heavily on my behalf for me and spent a lot of time working with my insurance to get me covered.

The main downside of TMS is simply that you have to be fully dedicated to the treatment. For six weeks I had to go Monday through Friday to a special clinic that was a half an hour drive from my house. This was a point that they brought up repeatedly in my interviews to get the treatment, so I think it must be common that people decide that it is too much dedication. For me though, by the time I was interviewing to receive TMS I had really tried everything and I was absolutely desperate to follow any path that would offer relief from my symptoms. I had gone through multiple medications, had been in talk therapy for several years, tried CBT, DBT, self medication, meditation, yoga, exercising three times or more a week, different diets, spiritualism... Really the works. I could sometimes stave off my symptoms but eventually I would suffer a huge crash and totally burn out again.

One of the other possible side effects is also seizure during treatment(very rare) and because of this they ask that you abstain totally from substance use during the time as it can lower your seizure threshold, which I agreed to happily. While the idea of having a seizure was scary, I had already experienced so many horrible side effects from medications that didn't even alleviate my symptoms I was willing to try anything.

I am not an expert in the field but I do think that there is a lot of use that could be gained for any person who decided to try TMS, for me some of the things I noticed was that my brain fog started to lift and suddenly I was able to learn much more quickly. I started practicing languages and instruments to really help foster this growth in my brain. The TMS helped me break the patterns of my mental illness and start forming healthier ones...I really do credit it with saving my life.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#320

Post by serverlessmom »

trts wrote: post #129
serverlessmom wrote: post #108

Hey! I didn't under go SAINT TMS specifically, but I have undergone TMS therapy. Reading this article I'm not sure how different what I received actually is compared to SAINT, but TMS absolutely changed my life. I was referred to TMS after a rash of different medications and years of talk therapy fell short on relieving the worst of my symptoms. Many of the benefits the patients in this article discuss are ones I rec…

Really happy to read about your positive experience. TMS changed my life also. It ushered me out of a nearly 5-year depression. It was interesting to talk to the technicians/clinicians about how they came to be working at a TMS clinic. Several told me they'd been working in mental healthcare for decades, and were excited to work with TMS because it was the only thing they'd ever seen be truly effective in treating se…

Wow it's so great to hear from another person who had a life changing experience with TMS! The clinicians were really blown away by how quickly the TMS started to help me and even though it's been over two years since my treatment I really do feel as though it is still helping me now. The clinicians that I talked to at my clinic were similar in their experiences. It really does drive home for me how debilitating depression actually was for me and still is for so many people. I spent years taking all the "right" steps to feel better and following advice from different doctors, and I still was often overwhelmed. I am happy that now when I use the skills I had built up over years with my therapist they are a lot more effective.
Post reply on HN