Posted by SLS on December 31, 2009, at 13:04:08
In reply to Re: Why do meds stop working? » SLS, posted by janejane on December 31, 2009, at 10:33:54
> > Many people use the expression that depression has many faces. This is true. However, I think it is equally true that many depressions have the same face. There are conditions other than the affective disorders that present depression as a symptom.
> >
> > I doubt that such statistics exist, but I am willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people who present with a symptom cluster that matches a diagnosis of major depression or bipolar disorder are indeed suffering from those illnesses. It is for the sake of the minority that more extensive diagnostic algorithms should exist.
> >
> >
> > - Scott
>
> Fair enough.
>
> You said in another post: "Perhaps I misunderstood Linkadge, but I interpreted his statement to mean that the core issue represented the primary biological pathology that produces dysregulation." -- Is this something that can even be addressed, or are we just not there yet?We are not there yet.
Scientists find so many biological anomalies associated with depression, I don't think they know where to focus their attention anymore.
> Do meds just treat symptoms?
I am probably in the minority, but I believe that antidepressants do indeed treat the illness as a global phenomenon rather than act as palliative care for individual symptoms. I think that these drugs are acting upstream of the primary pathologies, creating a cascade of events that leads to an improvement in neuronal dynamics and entire symptom clusters. In anxious depression for example, it seems to me that benzodiazepines treat the outward symptom of anxiety while antidepressants produce improvements in the core pathology that produces the entire symptom constellation, including the anxiety.
> Do you believe as linkadge earlier suggested, that long-term administration just leads to further imbalances?
I don't think I would extend that statement to all cases, but it certainly looks like there are changes that these drugs produce that are persist. Clues of this are the observations that one can experience antidepressanat poop-out or wind up resistant to a discontinued drug the second time it is employed. Something is made different by a drug between the time that the nervous system is initially exposed to it and when treatment resistance emerges. For me, I have seen persistent changes emerge from antidepressant use that involve autonomic function. I believe that tricyclic antidepressants have increased sympathetic tone and/or reduced parasympathetic tone.
One of my doctors recommended that I stay as "clean" as possible between trying new things. In other words, I should not play with old drugs that don't work very well while waiting for new drugs to become available. Unfortunately, new drugs were not coming out fast enough for me that I should risk wasting the rest of my life waiting and suffering.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:931510
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20091227/msgs/931799.html