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Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

theguardian.com

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Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#81

Post by IAmBroom »

funkychicken wrote: post #21
monero-xmr wrote: post #12

SSRIs literally saved my life, no question about it. Night and day difference, from daily panic attacks destroying my life, happiness, and career, to being almost completely better in 2 weeks after starting. I tried exercise and diet and meditation and you name it, for years! , before I gave medication a go. Do not care what the science says. It 100% worked for me. Please get help if you need it, tens of millions of…

Hopefully people don’t see articles like this (for depression) and think the results are the same for anxiety disorders.

THIS!

SSRIs have been proven to be very effective against anxiety disorders, which in many ways mimic depression, but have different pathologies and causes.

Also, they saved me.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#82

Post by tcj_phx »

lemming wrote: post #67
tcj_phx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Do you have a plan to get her off, or is she on the maintenance drug for life? It's too early to say. Obviously the idea is to get her off it if possible. SSRIs never help because of boosting serotonin. That's a hell of a claim, which could use some evidence.

> > SSRIs never help because of boosting serotonin.

> That's a hell of a claim, which could use some evidence.

My experience with the chatbots is that they start with the conventional marketing tropes, but if you ask pointed questions they'll dig into the actual research.

This thread started with a generic question about why ECT seemed to help some patients. It had a really good reasoning about why SSRIs are still the first-line treatment for depression, even though the MAOIs were much better drugs.

https://chatgpt.com/share/69207aa3-26a0-8005-8dda-8199da153f...

  The Big Picture

  SSRIs flood serotonin globally, which can suppress 
  dopamine/norepinephrine and blunt mood.
  
  Anti-serotonin strategies (receptor-specific antagonism, 
  reuptake enhancement, or targeted modulation) often 
  result in cleaner antidepressant effects with fewer 
  side effects.
  
  This supports the criticism you mentioned: SSRIs may 
  “work” only because the brain adapts to the serotonin 
  disruption, whereas directly reducing or modulating 
  serotonin is more therapeutic.
The whole 'conversation' is pretty good, and would provide plenty of search terms for helping you figure out what science has actually figured out about depression.

A simple pregnenolone supplement can sometimes be magical, because of the steroidogenesis cascade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid#/media/File:Steroidoge...

There's a supplement seller that said his pregnenolone powder was made with a newer, cleaner process than is used by most of the pregnenolone supplement vendors, but I don't know if he's still using that supplier. The powders are a much better value than the capsules.

hth.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#83

Post by tcj_phx »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #70
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homicidal?

Yep. My dad recounted that in 1989, he had to restrain her because she (then age 40) had a psychotic episode described as a "murderous impulse" just after starting a brand new "wonder pill", Prozac. This was quite uncharacteristic for a tiny, docile woman who is often described as "sweet" and "nice" who never had any psychiatric symptoms before or since except a couple of brief times of situational depression. There'…

Thanks for sharing your mom's experience with big pharma's then-new wonder-drug.

> Somehow, I doubt there is much motivation to look for economically inconvenient and unnerving side-effects in some demographics,

Robert Whitaker examined the pharmaceutical industry's ideological capture of conventional psychiatry in his third book, Psychiatry Under the Influence.

https://robertwhitakerbooks.com/psychiatry-under-the-influen...

I've written for the Mad in America Foundation's webzine. My latest piece was titled Theodoric of Arizona: State-Sanctioned Pharma-Based Pseudo-Doctor: https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/07/theodoric-arizona/

This was inspired by the old SNL skit, Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber. The article is structured around my proposal of a Theodoric’s Principle of Medical Advancement, to explain why medical progress is so glacial.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#84

Post by fgonzag »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #40
fgonzag wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, after struggling for 39 years, glp-1 + SSRI + ADHD meds have made me a normal productive human, and 2 years ago I had pretty much given up on the possibility. Having a child forced me to fix my life, and I'm incredibly happy because of it.

What’s normal anyway?

For me? Not being hyper anxious all day (to the point that I just freeze and procrastinate all day), being able to sort of focus on the most important task (I'm still ADHD with 1000 unfinished projects, but at least I finish the things that have to be finished), eating healthy and enjoying exercising (100 lbs down and got quite good at tennis), not entering into a rage state due to anxiety overflow everytime I fight with my wife, being able to regulate my emotions, I could go on and on honestly.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#87

Post by blast »

lemming wrote: post #67
tcj_phx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Do you have a plan to get her off, or is she on the maintenance drug for life? It's too early to say. Obviously the idea is to get her off it if possible. SSRIs never help because of boosting serotonin. That's a hell of a claim, which could use some evidence.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#88

Post by Retric »

DANmode wrote: post #62
fragrom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what my psychiatrist more or less warned me about when I went on medication; that a lot of people who are suicidal lack the energy and ability to plan their suicide, and medications can sometimes undo those particular symptoms and people manage to end themselves. I'm not sure what kinds of studies have been done about it, but I've had a few therapists same similar ideas. If it's not a studied phenomenon, then…

[flagged]

Depression is likely to have many possible underlying causes.

It’s a description of a persistent set of symptoms not necessarily any specific biological process.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#89

Post by dboreham »

Chemicals like this imho act like "global variables" for the neural network. Perhaps a bit like temperature in an LLM. They have an effect, but the effect is sort of holographic -- there's no way to predict/compute exactly what the effect will be, because it's a function of parameters that include all the training data, specifics of neuron function that depend on DNA and other environmental factors and so on. The effect might be beneficial, by some definition of beneficial, but it might not. Even a simple chemical like ethanol has a wide variety of effects on different people.

Re: Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

#90

Post by carabiner »

monero-xmr wrote: post #12

SSRIs literally saved my life, no question about it. Night and day difference, from daily panic attacks destroying my life, happiness, and career, to being almost completely better in 2 weeks after starting. I tried exercise and diet and meditation and you name it, for years! , before I gave medication a go. Do not care what the science says. It 100% worked for me. Please get help if you need it, tens of millions of…

> Articles like this are part of the narrative that SSRIs in general are no better than placebo. Absolutely not true for me!

Does "placebo" mean "no effect" to some people? Placebo absolutely has an effect. Testimonies like this are on the level of "vaccines caused autism" pseudoscience and the serotonin theory of depression isn't even taught any more. It belongs in the bin of crackpot treatments like chiropractic. There is zero chance Prozac would receive FDA approval today.

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