Posted by saltate on August 6, 2005, at 9:05:15
In reply to Re: Do SSRIs work?, posted by SLS on August 6, 2005, at 6:19:05
I was talking to my mother and she made me think of something. We were discussing the popularity of ssris. She said that tons of people at her office were on them. Now, odds are, there were not dozens of people at her small office that had the kind of serious long term depression problems I have had (unless that job is just really awful!, jk) In fact, my mother happened to know many of those people for years and knew that they were taking ssris for far less severe problems. With the popularity of psychiatry and drug miracle stories, its very probable that people who just have a case of the blues or feel something is missing in their lives or who have been under alot of stress wind up going to the psychiatrists and being diagnosed as depressed. Now, the tool that we use to measure depression is mostly the hamilton scale or some other similar scale. It ocurred to me that this is a very inaccurate tool, as someone who had just experienced a breakup or something could very well score much higher then someone who has chronic depression. Depression is a subjective feeling, not an objective numerative collection of symptoms. In fact, I think that the objective symptoms of depression diminish over time as one has to either cope with one's life or die, or the objective symptoms aren't even noticed because they are so engrained in the depressed person's mind, whereas the subjective feeling of depression remains the same or gets worse. Think about the questions: Have you been sleeping more or less? If you have just noticed a problem, you are going to respond. If you've been oversleeping or undersleeping for years, you won't respond. Have you lost interest in activities? Not if you are a chronich anhedonia sufferer. It seems the test is geared towards people whose problems are recently developed. SSRIS might be broadly successful for people who have minor problems with the blues or transient stress. They promote a feeling of apathy which people might see as "curing" their "depression." From my own experience and ALOT of anecdotal evidence and a few non drug company studies. SSRIs aren't that effective in people with severe, long term, or treatment resistant depression. I am surprised no one ever thinks about this from theis angle.
poster:saltate
thread:537656
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050803/msgs/538240.html