A pill for every ill ?

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Some months ago I was reading New Scientist and I saw an article asking some questions about depression.

The article is asking the question of "are the medical profession and the drug industry trying to turn sad feeling into a disease ?". What do you think ?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true

PS. I recall the lines from the film Dr Zirvago which state that "Happy men do not want to change anything, they want to keep things the way they are". If all people were perfectly happy with the world then nothing would ever be improved.

The 1965 version of Dr Zirvago is great.

when i went crazy a few years back and was hospitalized i gotta say in group in the mornings everyone was bragging about all the meds they were on. it was insane and i needed out of there as quickly as possible! so i think if people didnt want the meds there wouldnt be all these rediculose pills for growing eyelashes and stuff my god

I don't think that a person should have to take pills, if they don't want to. I've been toying with the idea of going off my meds with the help of my doctor. On the other hand, maybe I won't, because I was too hyper before I was put on my pills.

Well, the important thing with depression is that it isn't just a sad feeling--it has other physical and mental symptoms. There's the agitated or slowed movement; the weight gain or loss; the sleep disturbances. The metabolism changes; the immune system weakens; the thoughts change in definable and predictable ways to become both more realistic and more pessimistic. Problem-solving skills practically disappear. Dreams are repetitive and don't result in the same processing of emotions and information that they usually should. Even the IQ is measurably lower when someone is depressed, because they are unable to put out the usual effort during testing.

Depression itself is a known phenomenon, and it doesn't just mean a "sad feeling". Normal sadness resolves by itself; depression, if it resolves by itself, will do so only after months or even years.

I think that people should take pills only if they have real depression and not just a sad feeling. Callista described what I believe is real depression. I also think if your going to take pills you need to have therapy like CBT and learn how to help yourself for when you come off them. Otherwise the depression will probably return again.

What Callista said. Depression obviously needs to be eradicated, but normal human sadness really really should not be. It has a function and it part of being human. If you didn't feel sad when you made a mistake, you wouldn't care so much about not making that mistake again. I could go on.

QFT

Not to mention that any doctor with a brain knows that antidepressants don't really work on mild depression, and a pill isn't going to help if your life just sucks.

Thank you Callista- people use the term depression so easily to describe a bad day it gets to the point that clinical depression is seen as feeling sorry for yourself. Think of it this way-You can say you love your partner and you can say you love pizza, but is it the same thing? Clinical Depression is black sucking vortex to hell.

The idea that depressed people should take anti-depressant is based on the idea that depression is incurable. I know of a couple of studies that show that Tai Chi Chuan and Chi Kung have been shown to be a great assistance towards treating or even curing depression. The only reason I know about those studies, by the way, is because of my interest in Tai Chi Chuan. I'm sure there are other methods of help with depression that I don't know about.

I'm not saying "don't take anti-depressants." While you're on them, though, please think about a possible way around them in the future, and try to get to the point where you won't need them while taking them.

Edit: By the way, the reason I would like people to try and not be so dependant on pills is because of the simple fact that they're not "good" for you. They're often better than not taking them, yes, but the side effects of many medications, especially psych meds, is astounding and terrifying.

Not only that, but it seems to be pulling a screen over the problem rather than actually fixing it. How often do depressed people get cured by taking anti-depressants? It hides the problem so it's not properly dealt with. And yes, often times we don't know how to fix it, and other times there probably isn't any way to fix it even if we could fix every case possible. Still, if there is a chance of solving the problem, of making the mind healthy, then why shouldn't we try that rather than the screen?

Last edited by MrLoony on 26 Dec 2009, 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That sounds interesting. I'll look it up. I just think depression should be taken seriously. My son's uncle killed himself last month after suffering through a depression for a few years. He was exactly the type to tell himself he could "snap out of it" on his own. His family is devastated.

That's to assume that the problem isn't chemical to begin with. If the depression is situational, chances are an antidepressant won't help in the first place. If the problem is based in a chemical imbalance in your brain, correcting that imbalance isn't just masking the problem, it's treating the problem. It may not be a cure, but insulin isn't a cure for diabetes either, and you wouldn't say that a diabetic taking insulin is "pulling a screen over the problem." (Well, if it were type 2 diabetes and they were taking the insulin instead of doing things like diet and exercise, you might make that argument.. but I guess in this case type 2 diabetes would be analogous to mild depression and type 1 to severe depression that truly requires medication..)

If it wasn't chemical to begin with, it soon will be. The thought patterns lead to the neurotransmitter changes and the learned behaviors that spell out depression. Even depression that started out thanks to bad circumstances and lack of skills to cope with said circumstances will eventually turn up the physical symptoms, just like depression that is mostly genetic predisposition triggered by stress. The important thing with the depression that comes from bad circumstances is that these things have to be dealt with before you can manage to deal with the depression, just like you have to deal with a roach infestation in your house before it becomes possible to get rid of asthma symptoms. There's a reason for Axis IV on the DSM; mental illnesses do not occur in isolation from environmental/social problems, and when these occur, they need to be noted and taken care of.

Antidepressants are not a cure. For the most part, when they work, they alleviate symptoms to some degree, and shorten the duration of the depression (most depression is episodic, but would you rather have a three-month or a three-year episode?). The idea of some magic pill that makes you feel better immediately is of course a myth. What antidepressants do is generally subtle, and you may only be able to tell by comparing your scores on depression rating scales from week to week. However, I do think they've saved lives by making it possible for people to avoid attempting suicide, and making it possible for people to think clearly enough for a more long-term solution to be found through therapy and other sorts of education.

Trust me, I know how seriously depression needs to be taken. I am very close to people who have made multiple suicide attempts, and one that succeeded.



The thing is that you're assuming that a chemical imbalance can't be fixed, that the body can't fix the chemical imbalance itself. Or that we can't fix the chemical imbalance, I suppose. Anti-depressants are a screen because they don't actually fix the problem, they just treat the symptoms. The problem must be treated at its core.

Edit: Oh, and this site has a good summary of a number of studies about Tai Chi Chuan. Keep in mind that most studies have only been recent, and not many done. Doctors don't like to think that some monk in China 700 years ago came up with something that they couldn't.

What was said above is true. Sadness is a normal human feeling while depression is a pathology. That is a illness or a deviation from the normal functioning of the human body.
When patients who suffered from depression are asked if their experience with depression was something similar to being sad they respond that the two things (being sad and being depressed) are two whole different things. And that being depressed "feels" very different from feeling just sad, although they might somehow overlap...

And the pill does not make you feel better immediately... it usually takes from 2 to four weeks...

Well it looks like the new scientist article has provoked some thought, I think it is time that I should tell you about my own thoughts on the matter.

I think that a world of difference exists between feeling sad because "my dog has died", "my oven has just malfunctioned and burnt my dinner", "my car has broken down" etc and what depression is.

I fear that if we lose the understanding of the difference between being sad (a normal and something healthy thing) and depression (a mental health problem) then we will be stepping onto a slippery slope which leads into the abyss.

My worst fear is that if we overmedicalise everything, then as humans we will become less human. We will start to deny that we lack free will and we will reduce ourselves to mere robots. I think that humans are more than just a sum of their experiences and brain biochemistry.

I am a chemist so I am sure that it will not be much of a shock for you to learn that I am a great believer in the "power of the molecule", but I fear that lazy or poorly informed medical doctors will simply reach for their prescription pad rather than doing something else which does the patient more good.

Another interesting article can be found at http://current.com/1m64i4c

Given the fact that this post is on WP, I am curious as to why no one has made a Harrison Bergeron reference yet. In a world with psychology claims abnormality as wrong, it feels like we're going ever closer to the place dreamed of by Vonnegut, or perhaps Pete Abrams would be a better example in this case.