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

Withdrawal from Antidepressants

madinamerica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 131 posts

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#11

Post by tcj_phx »

tokenadult wrote: post #7

The home page of the site hosting the webpage submitted here, "Mad in America: Science, Psychiatry, and Social Justice" looks to put a lot more emphasis on the social justice, as the authors published on the site define that, than on science in general or psychiatry in particular. This is more a site that advocates for a particular policy point of view than a site that neutrally reviews the latest methodologically ca…

> This is more a site that advocates for a particular policy point of view than a site that neutrally reviews the latest methodologically careful research.

Mad in America was the title of investigative journalist Robert Whitaker's first book. Whitaker's second book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, proposes that there is not and has never been any evidence that commonly used psychiatric prescriptions actually work over the long-term.

This HN submission was from 2 days ago: Psychiatrists Must Face Possibility That Medications Hurt More Than They Help (scientificamerican.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13186201

The Scientific American article says, essentially, that "Maybe Robert Whitaker is right..."

I am not anti-psychiatry, I am opposed to treating symptoms instead of causes. My friend would be doing much better if her psychiatrists would prescribe useful drugs (naltrexone, thyroid, B-vitamins, etc), instead of harmful ones.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#12

Post by vomitcuddle »

As someone who had to abruptly come off venlafaxine due to side effects, I can tell you that it was complete hell. I experienced vomiting, the weirdest, most horrible nightmares every night, sleep paralysis with hallucinations and a recurring feeling of "electic shocks" inside my head. This lasted about a month. I think it borders on inhumane not to mention possible withdrawal symptoms before prescribing this awful "anti-"depressant.

My doctor eventually prescribed me trazodone, so I could just sleep the withdrawals off.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#13

Post by ipunchghosts »

Alex3917 wrote: post #2

On a related note, there's no good half-life calculator on the web for people tapering off SSRIs. The issue is that in order to actually have as gentle a taper as possible, you need to halve your dose only every few weeks because of how long the half life of these drugs is. So ideally you'd want something where you would enter your starting dose and how much of the drug you plan on taking each day, and it would show…

I second this. I was on zoloft for IBS. Getting off of it was terrible. I had to taper down 25% each step and each step lasted weeks. Overall, it took the same time to taper off of it as when I needed it.

I quit taking it because my IBS was not really IBS, it was a defective gallbladder. It was removed and my symptoms went away.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#14

Post by geofft »

tokenadult wrote: post #7

The home page of the site hosting the webpage submitted here, "Mad in America: Science, Psychiatry, and Social Justice" looks to put a lot more emphasis on the social justice, as the authors published on the site define that, than on science in general or psychiatry in particular. This is more a site that advocates for a particular policy point of view than a site that neutrally reviews the latest methodologically ca…

But of course which methodologically careful research has been done of late is extremely agenda-driven and politicized, too!

You can't launder your biases away by putting them behind the abstraction barrier of what the government or what drug companies are willing to fund. That's how you end up with p-hacking. Better to acknowledge that the reason people do science is to do things with science, not because they find sound research intrinsically fulfilling, and that everyone and every funding agency brings their biases, their hopes and dreams for society, with them.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#15

Post by jrochkind1 »

chris_wot wrote: post #6
dbg31415 wrote: post #3

We think of doctors and medications as being scientific and precise. But it's more like just throwing some food coloring into a black garbage bag full of all sorts of stuff and shaking it up in hopes of getting it to get to a specific color... but not really being able to see the color through the bag. The drugs all have side-effects, different for each person who takes them. And often those side-effects are as bad a…

In Australia (or at least NSW), the health system doesn't know what to do with you. About 7 months ago I had a mental breakdown and experienced thoughts of suicide. When the health system found out, I had finished having the thoughts, and was at home trying to sleep, being supported by my loving family having been awake at the time for over 14 hours. I was ripped out of my bed by ambulance officers with police presen…

> After I realised this was what had happened I got placed in an isolation room, with no explanation as to why, and there I sat quietly rotting for the next 5.5 hours. In other words, I got no care, had my rights stripped and was treated like a criminal because after a sustained period of incredible stress I had a breakdown

That sounds like enough to _cause_ a breakdown!

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#16

Post by thanatropism »

Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

The problems pointed out in this article -- which are in some degree real even if heavily editorialized -- must be understood in light of a wider context which includes:

0) The very poor standards of validity and replicability in most fields of experimental psych-whatever. The Popperian method ain't what it used to be.

1) The Viennese Waltz of bad incentives throughout the psychiatry research pipeline. Most notably, drug companies are incentivized for fraud and deceit by being rewarded for closely-guarded research, hiding negative studies and obtaining patent extensions for new applications of existing drugs.

2) Somewhat related to (1): the unfortunate drug safety model prevalent in all relevant nations in which drugs must be proven to work for some pathology. Besides incentivizing recklessness in industry-led research, this means viable off-label usages go "underground" (topiramate for dissociative disorders is a typical case where FDA-worthy testing might be impossible). It might be better if the FDA and its counterparts instead regulated for drug _safety_ in humans and let the academic and clinical communities evolve their professional consensuses.

3) Much related to (0): the effective failure of "talking cures" in outcompeting drugs (specially "dirty drugs" like anticonvulsants, neuroleptics and non-SSRI antidepressants) for "simple" depression, bereavement and related mental health issues of which one could whip up a "social critique" of drug use and so forth. "Mad in America" is obviously not willing to make a fuss of things like bipolar where people will take their lithium for decades and bear the side-effects because the alternative is to go actually mad-crazy.

Did I miss something?

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#17

Post by drzaiusapelord »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #5

Not sure if this supports the article or is just a warning, but going off of anti-depressants can be fatal. If depression relapses anti-depressants that once worked can prove ineffective. (edit: wrongly said SSRIs and not anti-depressants) David Foster Wallace: Wallace died by suicide on September 12, 2008, at age 46. Wallace's father reported in an interview that his son had suffered from depression for more than 20…

Phenelzine is actually a MAOI, which is a different class of drug. My understanding is that Wallace had hard to treat depression and was on this more dangerous class of drug as SSRI's didn't work well on him. He also died with Clonazepam and Temazepam in his system. Wallace also received electric shock therapy, which suggests his depression was much more serious than most cases.

I think his case is very much an edge case here. He had very serious problems with a hard to treat depression and was on a MAO inhibitor, which is seen as the last resort for pharmacological treatments of depression because its so unstable, short-lived, and has nasty side effects and is difficult to ween off. SSRI's are much more safe.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#18

Post by Lxr »

thanatropism wrote: post #16

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. The problems pointed out in this article -- which are in some degree real even if heavily editorialized -- must be understood in light of a wider context which includes: 0) The very poor standards of validity and replicability in most fields of experimental psych-whatever. The Popperian method ain't what it used to be. 1) The Viennese Waltz of bad incentives throughout the psychiatry research pi…

> It might be better if the FDA and its counterparts instead regulated for drug _safety_ in humans and let the academic and clinical communities evolve their professional consensuses.

The problem is that safety is not binary - it's a question of severity and probability of adverse effects vs the benefit of the drug (the risk of adverse side effects is more acceptable for a cancer treatment than a cough medicine for instance). The purported purpose of regulation is to balance risk vs benefit. Therefore the regulator needs to incorporate the indication into their decision, and so they must evaluate if it actually works.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#19

Post by mcjiggerlog »

vomitcuddle wrote: post #12

As someone who had to abruptly come off venlafaxine due to side effects, I can tell you that it was complete hell. I experienced vomiting, the weirdest, most horrible nightmares every night, sleep paralysis with hallucinations and a recurring feeling of "electic shocks" inside my head. This lasted about a month. I think it borders on inhumane not to mention possible withdrawal symptoms before prescribing this awful "…

I went through a similar experience (although not as extreme) when coming off of citalopram, even with a doctor's guidance.

Lots of nausea and disorientation, but worst of all were the "electric shocks" which really were very disturbing.

Not a single mention of these when having the medicine prescribed!

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#20

Post by vacri »

concinds wrote: post #10
dbg31415 wrote: post #3

We think of doctors and medications as being scientific and precise. But it's more like just throwing some food coloring into a black garbage bag full of all sorts of stuff and shaking it up in hopes of getting it to get to a specific color... but not really being able to see the color through the bag. The drugs all have side-effects, different for each person who takes them. And often those side-effects are as bad a…

> If you had cancer, everyone would be there to support you. If you have a mental illness, there's not much chance of getting support from peers Because most people have no clue what to do about psychological illness, are afraid of doing more harm than good (not wrongly) and have pathology of their own that they're having trouble dealing with. And if mental illness as tied to family dysfunction as I think, then the p…

Having formally studied mental illness and also suffering from mild clinical depression myself, I'm of the opinion that unless you have studied it, have it, or have a close friend or relative with it, the average person just won't understand mental illness at all. It's so counter-intuitive in so many ways.
Post reply on HN