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Pistonhead
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19 Jan 2011, 9:05 am

Apera wrote:
I know that abilifi helped my depression, but chemical imbalance was only one part of that - I had to get my thoughts beyond it as well. Adderal did more to affect my sleep patterns than my concentration.


What an odd choice of success stories. Adderal ruined one of my ex's metabolism (and she became fat) and Abilifi really f****d up the girl I'm with now while she was on it.


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liveandletdie
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19 Jan 2011, 2:05 pm

mgran wrote:
The statistical analyses that suggests these drugs cause people to die thirty years earlier is flawed, to say the least. For a start, people with serious mental health problems have a shorter life expectancy anyway, due to suicide and self neglect. Someone who becomes an alcoholic, for example, because it's the only way to get to sleep, is not going to live as long as someone who is not self medicating. People who forget to eat properly are not going to be as healthy as someone with a healthy appetite. Is the "thirty years shorter life span" based on the average life expectancy of someone with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or is it based on the average life expectancy of the entire population? Also, the idea that the drugs are cutting into life expectancy as sharply as that... is this taking into account everyone who is ever on psychotropic medication at some point in their life? If so, then those who are medically non compliant have a shorter life expectancy than those who remain on their meds. How is this factor weighted for?

Where is an academically solid, well researched and referenced study that supports the idea that psychotropic medications reduce life expectancy by up to thirty years? People need all the facts before them before being scared into making decisions that aren't necessarily best for them. I know for a fact my life expectancy would have been far less if I hadn't found the right meds, because chances are high that I'd have ended up killing myself.


I find the info flawed too in doing a little research, it could be those with mental illness generally have a shorter life span (Not saying this is true either) the proof is not in the pooding. Anti psychotics is the only one with a little bit of evidence since it shuts down a lot of systems in the brain but also not going to say that's for sure either.


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bjcirceleb
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20 Jan 2011, 2:49 am

The longer a person stays on medications that shorter their life span becomes, and people who do not take med's and yet are still scizophrenic do not have shorter life spans. The drugs help some people and I am one person who is on drugs and also believe that taking them is better than not taking them, but that is for me. People need to be allowed to make informed decisions and I for one support the research. The side effects of these drugs are horrid and only an individual can decide what to do and what not to do. They do not help all people. They do not stop voices or anything of that nature. They sedate people so much that the voices and hallucinations and the like are not as much of an issue for them. For many people the same sedation would be achieved by taking valium and it would cause much less side effects. If these drugs were clear anti pscyhotic in nature and only stopped voices and hallucinations and the like, then 90% of the people taking them would not be as they are not psychotic in any way to begin with. WHy do they insist on putting every single person in a nursing home on antipsychotics, why put all the kids in foster care on these drugs and the like. In Europe they call them Neuroleptics, because they are simply acting on the nervous system and they prescribe them in much lower doses and are more likely to have people on them only during times of crisis and not all the time. Research on people relapsing when not on meds is based on people abraptly withdrawn from drugs and not weaned from them. Those that are weaned, relapse at lower rates than those kept on medications all the time. And Europe has higher life expectancies for people with these conditions than the US does If you treat people like human beings and support them when they ask for help and allow them to learn the signs of their illness they and there loved ones will learn when they are becoming unwell and they are much more likely to take med's then. People who stop taking them are doing so because they cannot tolerate the side effects. Putting them on a lower dose would also assist such people. Raise the doseage when they are reaching a crisis and you will circumvent it in the path and keep the person out of hospital and also keep them on the med's as they are not as toxic to them. What is a tolerable side effect for one person is not for another. Only an individual can decide whether a side effect is better than the condition itself, and whether the benefits obtained from the medication outweigh the side effects. Most of these people are not hurting other people, they are just acting strangely. I know of someone who saw bunnies everywhere and would walk around them all the time. They never told anyone off for stepping on them, just did not walk in a straight line themselves. WHY does such an individual need to be forced to take drugs that are toxic to them, that did not stop them from seeing the bunnies, just made him so lethargic he could hardly walk and hence did not walk in odd ways. People with limps do not walk straight. We do not force these people to take medications that make them unable to walk. Voilence from people with mental illnesses is also seen much more in those that are more highly medicated, and in communities in which people are kept on medication. In third world countries where people rarely have aaccess to these drugs they make full recoveries more often, are not voilent and have lower relapse rates. That does not mean the drugs are wrong and should never be used, what is means is that we need to offer something other than drugs and stop forcing them onto people. If people commit a crime they commit a crime and should be charged with and take responsiblity for that offence, regardless of their condition. It is up to an individual to ensure that they are under control, that their behaviour is not negatively impacting on others, etc. They decide whether to take medication or not and have to take responsibility for their actions if they do not.



Brianm
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23 Jan 2011, 4:04 am

bjcirceleb wrote:
I think you assume it is diffiuclt to get FDA approval, when in fact it is incredibly easy. The FDA has in most cases put such enormous restrcitions on the advertising of the drugs that the drug companies cannot advertise them themselves. The restrictions on advertising are put on, because the research presented to get the drugs approved has been so flawed that it cannot be seen as real research and shows absolutely nothing at all. To get approval, they have to prove the drug is not lethal in a four week period and that some people did gain some benefit from it, either equal to or better than placebo, over a 4 week period. That is all that is required. They then try and tell you that you should be on these meds for life when there is no research at all to support that statement.

I have benefited from being on a low dose of an antidepressent, but I have not benefited from any other drugs. The side effects were huge and I also gained nothing from them either. Either way the fact is my life is not simply a chemical imbalance in my brain, it is much more complicated than that and I do need to deal with the real issues in my life.

Reality is that the rates for recovery from mental illness today are the worst they have ever been in history and are worse than they were at the beginning of the 20th century when the treatment of the day was to wrap people in wet sheets. Psychiatry has always had wonder stories to justify their million different therapies and the drugs of today are no differnet than the stories they told in the past. They always had people who said that XXX treatment saved them, the case studies and other research was always great and then when some other treatment came out it was said to not be so good. Medication is no different. Research has consistently showed that the newer medications are no more effective, no less side effects than the first generation of whatever drugs, it is just that the drug companies have the funding to spend on advertising campaigns to sell drugs under patents, verses those that are not, and the more expensive the drugs the more advertising they do!! ! You can find a person who will say insulin coma saved their live, ECT saved there live, being wrapped in wet sheets saved their live, labotomy saved their life, thorazine saved their live, etc, etc, etc. Smoking causes lung cancer that does not mean that every single person who smokes will develop lung cancer. The best research consistently shows that the best results are found in people on very low or intimitent doses of medication. Does that mean that no one does well on it, no but on the whole they do not, and so the miracle stories the drug companies want you to believe are not as common as those of people on low or no doses of medication, just like most people who smoke will have health issues from it, most people will be worse of on meds. It is an individaul decision to make to weight up the pro's and con's of what a medication can do for you, but you do need to be aware of the limitions of medication. The fact that over 50% of people recover while on placebo in trails says that a lot of what makes people well is just the thought that they are being treated!! !

I think this video clip says it all really well!! !!
http://balts.squarespace.com/blog/2011/ ... nt11025373


Medications only mask the symptoms, but they don't actually fix the problem. There is a naturatl suppliment from a company called TrueHope. This supplement doesn't work everybody, but it sure worked for my. It has no side affects unlike all the other medications out there and it works better.