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

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 561 posts

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

#541

Post by intull »

conartist6 wrote: post #404
robertakarobin wrote: post #108

I was very young when my mom started Prozac but do remember how angry and sad she was before compared to after. Years later there was a time when me and my sister noticed our mom was acting a bit strange -- more snappish and irritable than usual, and she even started dressing differently. Then at dinner she announced proudly that she had been off Prozac for a month. My sister and I looked at each other and at the sam…

That's what freaks me out about these drugs. You-on-the-pill becomes you, and you can't ever stop.

IMO, that's a common misconception. The fact that it seems this way can be attributed misunderstanding, bias in data, and perhaps a poor treatment choice. Sometimes, it's also the best healthcare can do for now.

Medical interventions for mental health issues aren't a forever-crutch. Plenty of people do taper off/change something about their prescriptions after a certain point, but we rarely ever hear those stories. What we do hear is plenty of people getting on meds/being on meds for a long time, which can bias us and make us think that most people who get on meds are on it for life.

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

#542

Post by staticman2 »

ryeights wrote: post #534
staticman2 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a good fit for the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Grandparent's report is hard to verify, not extraordinary. These drugs are approved based on statistical safety profiles in limited trial populations, not on a scientific consensus that absolutely nobody on Earth will ever experience a unique adverse reaction. Also, I never said that you, the reader, had an obligation to chang…

Millions of people take SSRIs on a daily basis without these dramatic symptoms. Millions more tried them (for much longer periods than 5 days) and then desisted from treatment without major lifelong mental alterations. So yes, I would say GP’s experience is ‘extraordinary’, i.e., outside of the ordinary expectation

How did you determine that "Millions more tried them... and then desisted from treatment without major lifelong mental alterations"?

Someone literally just told you this happened to them, and your reaction was "I don't believe you," followed by a confident statistic you apparently invented.

Do you think if one person in a million took a drug and had their emotional system altered, a siren would go off? That the TV would be interrupted by an all-seeing oracle declaring a medical anomaly?

If a rare side effect occurs, it looks exactly like this: scattered individuals complaining on the internet.

You're misapplying the Carl Sagan popularized aphorism "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and apparently think the meaning of an aphorism can be determined by looking up one of the keywords in the dictionary, rather than, say, the Wikipedia article on the aphorism itself.

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

#543

Post by ryeights »

staticman2 wrote: post #542
ryeights wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people take SSRIs on a daily basis without these dramatic symptoms. Millions more tried them (for much longer periods than 5 days) and then desisted from treatment without major lifelong mental alterations. So yes, I would say GP’s experience is ‘extraordinary’, i.e., outside of the ordinary expectation

How did you determine that "Millions more tried them... and then desisted from treatment without major lifelong mental alterations"? Someone literally just told you this happened to them, and your reaction was "I don't believe you," followed by a confident statistic you apparently invented. Do you think if one person in a million took a drug and had their emotional system altered, a siren would go off? That the TV wo…

> How did you determine that "Millions more tried them... and then desisted from treatment without major lifelong mental alterations"?

We have lots of public data on SSRI usage (20+ million in the US alone each year) and discontinuation rates. The drugs themselves are decades old and have been through countless trials and studies, and of course there are databases like FAERS that track reports of adverse drug reactions.

Is your assertion that this is false? That in fact the typical SSRI patient is mentally/emotionally crippled by the drug? Doctors and public health agencies are hiding a public health catastrophe to sell genericized pills that cost tens of dollars a month?

Of course severe side effects can and do happen. Doesn’t mean every bad thing that happens to a person who happened to take SSRIs for a few days should be taken as a big cautionary tale.

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

#544

Post by johnisgood »

johnisgood wrote: post #528
marky1991 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had recurring headaches my entire life. Have been to many neurologists, none have any idea what causes them, they just give me different pills to prevent them instead. This isn't unusual for headaches, quite often the cause is basically unknown. (If you ask people they'll give you a series of common things, eg water consumption, eating enough, etc, but it's just all unprovable folk medicine) Expecting everyone t…

I am not trying to say that you are never supposed to take medications long-term. I take medications, too. Unfortunately the causes are known (or rather, there is a diagnosis), but there is no treatment or cure. What I am trying to say is that after the Nth time you would take the kid to the doctor to find out what causes the pain, instead of just giving them painkillers. It could easily be something treatable, or ra…

Have you tried sumatriptan by the way?

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

#545

Post by peepee1982 »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #356
peepee1982 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty tough to exercise or clean your house when getting out of bed feels like an insurmountable task. Depression isn’t like an infection or cancer—it’s a diagnosis based on established criteria, as are most mental disorders. Experts may disagree on diagnosis or treatment, but that doesn’t make it useless. By that logic, you might as well say autism is caused by avoiding eye contact—since there’s no blood test…

I'm autistic by some measure. Eye contact is uncomfortable but I push myself. I avoid it most of the time but yet play the game and do my best. I'm finally at the point where I'll keep eye contact until I've completed the social requirement.

[flagged]

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

#546

Post by FatherOfCurses »

hajile wrote: post #505
crowbahr wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's your opinion, that is not the general opinion of the professionals in the field. I trust a cohort of scientists significantly more than anonymous strangers online, and you should too.

The data is very clear that the rate of mental illnesses is increasing. Rates of severe mental illnesses like Schizophrenia are also increasing. NONE of the current theories being experimented with on patients have a concrete, proven scientific basis with some such as the decades-long SSRI scam have actively harmed patients and created physical dependence/addiction and actively causing harm to patients and their fami…

Our ability to diagnose mental illnesses are improving.

50 years ago many people with mental illness would go undiagnosed. They would instead self-medicate through alcohol, illicit drugs, or risky behavior and die far too young after leading miserable lives.

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

#548

Post by hollerith »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #547

Folks who are ideologically opposed to psychiatric drugs are almost as irritating as folks who are ideologically opposed to vaccines.

I agree. I like the position of Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, board-certified psychiatrist, who maintains that psych drugs are appropriate in certain circumstances. He says that if they were used only when appropriate (i.e., not as a response to an adverse life event and only after a trial of interventions like counseling, exercise, keto diet, gluten-free diet and evaluation for physiological disorders) they'd be used at about 5% of the rate that they used now.

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

#549

Post by cindyllm »

gh0stcat wrote: post #471
robertakarobin wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you can understand that this and other comments about needing to find meaning and needing to sit with inner feelings... It feels patronizing. I have spent tremendous amounts of time and energy analyzing my feelings and looking for meaningful experiences. I've sought relief in meditation, religion, therapy, yoga, travel, art, etc. Most people probably have in one way or another. It's not rocket science to know…

I'm sorry it came off that way, I really didn't intend it to be, it was actually a self call out because I actually never learned as a child to sit with my inner feelings. I attribute that to being more sensitive and probably more intelligent than my siblings and acting as a buffer for my parents and basically only ever wanting to make other people happy, I never developed an inner world like other kids do. Also I no…

[dead]

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

#550

Post by diggyhole »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #265
RickJWagner wrote: post #74

Fortunately, there are well documented lifestyle adaptions that can sharply reduce depression. Religion is a good example. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3426191/

Swapping one problem for another. Religion sounds like the worst place for someone who is mentally vulnerable. It's like pulling out your credit card in a shopping mall full of salesmen who are under tremendous pressure to make big sales asap

Right. No one makes money off of SSRIs.
Post reply on HN