Posted by Eddie Sylvano on September 24, 2002, at 10:30:42
In reply to Antidepressants versus placebo smackdown!, posted by Anyuser on September 24, 2002, at 9:49:24
> For whatever reason, I am always deeply discouraged when the advocates of talk therapy knock antidepressant medication. I supposed that is a weakness in me, one of a long list. I hate to think the benefits of antidepressants are nothing more than wishful thinking. I know talk therapy is wishful thinking for me. Literally “wishful thinking.”
---------------------------------I think that there is a large pool of people taking ADs that don't need them, and their input is skewing the results in such a fashion.
Drugs definately affect the brain. Drink a beer or drop some acid, and you'll be convinced. The effects aren't placebo. The issue isn't about drugs, then, but about specific causation. SSRIs have an effect on the brain, but is that effect to make us less depressed? I guess it's possible that people are primed by the purpose of the drugs to interpret the effects it has as "happiness" when they're actually less specific. It raises a chicken and egg situation, though, as to why they came to be valued as antidepressants to begin with. The first ADs were discovered accidentally, when patients at a VA hospital began reporting that the drugs they were being given for tuberculosis (an MAOI), were making some happier. Obviously, no one had lead them to anticipate this.
It's also obvious to me that ceratin ADs seem to have no more effect on mood than a placebo, owing to a person's unique chemistry. That doesn't degrade the value the drug has to someone else, who actually benefits from it.
Ultimately, though, if all we had were effective placebos, they'd still be of more value than nothing.
poster:Eddie Sylvano
thread:120924
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020922/msgs/120931.html