Well ... here is mine [video=youtube;GuBt63f2I78]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuBt63f2I78[/video]
What is yours?
What is yours?
Opinion on Antidepressants?
- Thread starter Shaqie
- Start date
It saves lives.
There are risks. There are side effects. It should be strictly monitored.
But at the end of the day depression is an illness- and no matter what route you take, it needs to be managed. Depression kills. It rips apart lives. It's scary, it's painful and I don't believe going through it makes you a better, wiser or more learned person. No matter the root cause it's an illness and no one should suffer alone or without some sort of treatment.
There are risks. There are side effects. It should be strictly monitored.
But at the end of the day depression is an illness- and no matter what route you take, it needs to be managed. Depression kills. It rips apart lives. It's scary, it's painful and I don't believe going through it makes you a better, wiser or more learned person. No matter the root cause it's an illness and no one should suffer alone or without some sort of treatment.
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Do you think depression/illness was the cause or how you coped with it ? Who chooses to gain from an experience? I don't believe an illness/experience/circumstance makes you change yourself. There is more danger of it changing you.
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It's probably helpful to remember there's more than one kind of depression, according to the DSM-IV. Some kinds are temporary and unavoidable in life, and thus quite natural, which one can learn and grow from; others are seemingly lifelong and crippling, and it's these that are best characterized as illness, and not a natural reaction to unfortunate circumstances in one's life.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64063/
Personally, I find antidepressants yucky in their effects and side-effects. If I really needed something to get me through, because I really felt I was going to end up taking my life otherwise, I would smoke weed or something.
Prozac is supposed to feel a lot like ecstasy. They're almost the same drug, actually.
My two cents is that my depressions have helped me be a better person. But it does no one any good to fully experience depression if they do not come out alive. Staying alive takes clear priority.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64063/
Personally, I find antidepressants yucky in their effects and side-effects. If I really needed something to get me through, because I really felt I was going to end up taking my life otherwise, I would smoke weed or something.
Prozac is supposed to feel a lot like ecstasy. They're almost the same drug, actually.
My two cents is that my depressions have helped me be a better person. But it does no one any good to fully experience depression if they do not come out alive. Staying alive takes clear priority.
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Well, that explains a lot.
For me, I believe pain forges a stronger character so long as one is willing to bear the weight of it rather than let it define them or serve as a convenient excuse. It's not that I'm opposed to numbing pain, I'm opposed to cheating oneself out of the lessons it provides. But if one does not believe there are lessons to be learned in such circumstances or they don't care to learn them, then SSRI's might be a good fit. Along with daytime television and other distractions.
All righty then, glad that's been cleared up. Any manic depressives reading this, go ahead and get off your meds! Suck it up, be a man, and just watch yourself some Downton Abbey or something.
Seriously, people struggling with these problems do not need to hear that sort of crap yet again.
If you need help, in the form of antidepressants or otherwise, which may or may not be a good idea in your case, get it, and don't worry about what others may think.
Seriously, people struggling with these problems do not need to hear that sort of crap yet again.
If you need help, in the form of antidepressants or otherwise, which may or may not be a good idea in your case, get it, and don't worry about what others may think.
Sometimes a depression is too serious to merely be considered a learning experience. A significant number of people, particularly those who are already marginalized by society for one reason or another, kill themselves because they receive no treatment. It's easy to talk about how a little pain can make you grow as a person, and how what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but it's not always something that can be cured by watching daytime television and eating ice cream.
I don't think anyone is arguing that anti-depressants will solve all your problems on their own. In order to get through a depression, you need to work out which underlying issues have caused it in the first place, and then eliminate those. That's where the lessons are learned.
I don't think anyone is arguing that anti-depressants will solve all your problems on their own. In order to get through a depression, you need to work out which underlying issues have caused it in the first place, and then eliminate those. That's where the lessons are learned.
I don't subscribe to the "Tom Cruise" myopic view on depression either. I find the "suck it up" mentality easily affected when someone doesn't really have a medical issue or deal with someone who has a medical issue that requires not only medication but serious monitoring. There is a distinct difference between having a medical condition and a mental condition. Although we (meaning society at large) tend to want to lump all sorts of things under neat little umbrellas, there are people who have abnormalities (oh such as brain tumors) and physical imbalances (such as manic depressive/schizophrenia) who require medication in order to stabilize their medical condition. Not to be discounted or seen as having a "less than" condition are those who suffer from less medically serious conditions and instead have more of a mental condition (depression) who benefit from medication in combination with therapy. I daresay that if you haven't seen the affects of someone who needs their medication, off it, then you wouldn't talk out of your ass about sucking up the pain or not taking medication. ( Edit: And I am talking about a general attitude which people have toward scoffing at anti-depressants than in specific response to Korg (although he demonstrates facets of it admirably)--god knows, there are plenty of skeptics concerning the use of anti-depressants. I find the attitude short-sighted for many reasons and wasn't intending to point fingers per se. Just wanted to clarify because I wouldn't want to make Korg cry or something)
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I'm not sure that Korg meant that all cases somebody should "suck it up". I have seen profound depression beyond things which people can talk or think their way out of, almost certainly due to chemical imbalances. Medication for them is probably the only way to even begin to deal with it meaningfully.
I'd struggled with depression from a young age, probably partially due to a predisposition but increased due to my choices and environment. I also tried to kill myself, easily the worst mistake of my life or that I think I will ever make. To shrug one's pain and cause others more is just wrong. In the end, I finally knew rather than paid lip-service to or glanced at as stupidity, that dwelling on things serves no purpose. The feelings can still come, one can recognize them and move forward. Moving forward toward a solution is the only sane thing to do. The experiences served to solidify and work out my world view and as I see it purpose in life: actively working towards the change I want to see, in a way much more dedicated than I would have w/o experiencing the pain caused by the terrible state of affairs I saw the world in. Yet, we are where we are because people before us worked through hardship and the destruction of things they worked towards; what we have is what has survived. We owe it to them, and those like us in the future, to do what we can. To me, ignoring the problems was not an option, but I let the environment of pervasive uncaring affect me too much. This is certainly not to say that one shouldn't seek help. Frankly, this idea that everybody can take care of their lives by themselves, at all times, w/o anybody else is just silly. The biggest advantage that humanity has is to work together and create and do more than they would be able to alone. People, through their experiences or predispositions, may be in a better position to help others and may need, or at least benefit from, help themselves in other areas.
Medication has its place when it is a long-term problem. Relying on it to fix everything is not going to work. Therapy combined with medication work better than either of the two alone... which brings me to the placebo effect. It obviously works, in many more situations than any given drug. Understanding why it works seems like the one thing that would best benefit people in general. Alas, there's no money in it, and thus no research (science has gone crazy, something I want to address in another thread later on). In our time, people have truly been obsessed with money more than in any other time in history.
Finally, one who has experienced depression will be better able to help others. This is like how psychiatrists/therapists took LSD and other hallucinogens to help them better understand what a schizophrenic is going through (not that I would recommend taking these especially w/o some wisdom and control previously learned). Through an understanding of pain I feel that I have learned how it can affect people and how to cope better with it, and thus help others. These I think are the things that can be sort of blessings in disguise. If it is very profound and one is suicidal, medication can play a very important role in at least keeping things from getting worse. Yet, that will not make the problems go away, but provide an imperfect fix for it; ie in many cases it is treating the symptom but not the problem (I'm definitely not saying that everyone can fix themselves w/o it). There is much more to be done to provide a lasting solution, and relying solely on medication is not going to work in the long run.
I'd struggled with depression from a young age, probably partially due to a predisposition but increased due to my choices and environment. I also tried to kill myself, easily the worst mistake of my life or that I think I will ever make. To shrug one's pain and cause others more is just wrong. In the end, I finally knew rather than paid lip-service to or glanced at as stupidity, that dwelling on things serves no purpose. The feelings can still come, one can recognize them and move forward. Moving forward toward a solution is the only sane thing to do. The experiences served to solidify and work out my world view and as I see it purpose in life: actively working towards the change I want to see, in a way much more dedicated than I would have w/o experiencing the pain caused by the terrible state of affairs I saw the world in. Yet, we are where we are because people before us worked through hardship and the destruction of things they worked towards; what we have is what has survived. We owe it to them, and those like us in the future, to do what we can. To me, ignoring the problems was not an option, but I let the environment of pervasive uncaring affect me too much. This is certainly not to say that one shouldn't seek help. Frankly, this idea that everybody can take care of their lives by themselves, at all times, w/o anybody else is just silly. The biggest advantage that humanity has is to work together and create and do more than they would be able to alone. People, through their experiences or predispositions, may be in a better position to help others and may need, or at least benefit from, help themselves in other areas.
Medication has its place when it is a long-term problem. Relying on it to fix everything is not going to work. Therapy combined with medication work better than either of the two alone... which brings me to the placebo effect. It obviously works, in many more situations than any given drug. Understanding why it works seems like the one thing that would best benefit people in general. Alas, there's no money in it, and thus no research (science has gone crazy, something I want to address in another thread later on). In our time, people have truly been obsessed with money more than in any other time in history.
Finally, one who has experienced depression will be better able to help others. This is like how psychiatrists/therapists took LSD and other hallucinogens to help them better understand what a schizophrenic is going through (not that I would recommend taking these especially w/o some wisdom and control previously learned). Through an understanding of pain I feel that I have learned how it can affect people and how to cope better with it, and thus help others. These I think are the things that can be sort of blessings in disguise. If it is very profound and one is suicidal, medication can play a very important role in at least keeping things from getting worse. Yet, that will not make the problems go away, but provide an imperfect fix for it; ie in many cases it is treating the symptom but not the problem (I'm definitely not saying that everyone can fix themselves w/o it). There is much more to be done to provide a lasting solution, and relying solely on medication is not going to work in the long run.
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This is only tangentially related:
Another upcoming form of treatment for depression is the insertion of electrodes/wires that provides continuous, excitatory electrical stimulation to the frontal lobe*, the cingulate cortex**, and the temporal lobe***. In clinical trials, doing so has been shown to almost immediately alleviate physiological and psychological symptoms, as well as increase activity in the aforementioned regions and recreate a sensitivity to positive emotions. Most importantly, however, the chip indirectly inhibits another region (area 25) responsible for the inhibition of the frontal cortex, a trademark and possibly the physiological root of most depressions. The two areas share a negative correlation: more activity in one leads to less activity in the other. This form of treatment - deep brain stimulation (DBS) - is still experimental to my knowledge but has yielded good results so far; the initial study using this technique successfully treated 2/3 of its depressed population. The remaining 1/3 had either chaotic lives that limited the implants' impact or such extended neural and psychological damage (usually after one or more decades of severe clinical depression) that no tools available could help them.
*the frontal lobe is responsible for executive functions, personality, and emotional control
**the cingulate cortex is very influential in emotional processing, learning, and memory
***the temporal lobe synthesizes memory
(Many, if not all, of the above functions and facets are negatively modified by depression.)
The original study was conducted by Dr. Helen Mayberg in 2003, I believe, if anyone wants to look it up. My copy is elsewhere, or I would provide proper reference.
Another upcoming form of treatment for depression is the insertion of electrodes/wires that provides continuous, excitatory electrical stimulation to the frontal lobe*, the cingulate cortex**, and the temporal lobe***. In clinical trials, doing so has been shown to almost immediately alleviate physiological and psychological symptoms, as well as increase activity in the aforementioned regions and recreate a sensitivity to positive emotions. Most importantly, however, the chip indirectly inhibits another region (area 25) responsible for the inhibition of the frontal cortex, a trademark and possibly the physiological root of most depressions. The two areas share a negative correlation: more activity in one leads to less activity in the other. This form of treatment - deep brain stimulation (DBS) - is still experimental to my knowledge but has yielded good results so far; the initial study using this technique successfully treated 2/3 of its depressed population. The remaining 1/3 had either chaotic lives that limited the implants' impact or such extended neural and psychological damage (usually after one or more decades of severe clinical depression) that no tools available could help them.
*the frontal lobe is responsible for executive functions, personality, and emotional control
**the cingulate cortex is very influential in emotional processing, learning, and memory
***the temporal lobe synthesizes memory
(Many, if not all, of the above functions and facets are negatively modified by depression.)
The original study was conducted by Dr. Helen Mayberg in 2003, I believe, if anyone wants to look it up. My copy is elsewhere, or I would provide proper reference.
I couldn't agree more regarding the idea that people should seek help when they need it. My own personal opinion regarding mental health, which tends to be a very big umbrella term, is that there are medical issues and emotional/behavioral issues. The problem being that they are treated almost interchangeably. People who have a medical condition are mostly incapable of achieving a normal functioning level without some type of medical intervention. Regardless of any kind of emotional state or trigger or some such thing, they exhibit the signs of a mental (only to mean concerning the brain) illness.....such as seeing things, hearing voices, random disparate mood swings, seizures and so on. Then there are those who have an emotional/behavioral condition such as what is normally referred to as depression or some kind of personality disorder. The difficult thing about mental condition(s) is that prolonged periods of this type of emotional distress can begin to create physical manifestations and lead to attendant medical conditions. However, these type of mental conditions tend to originate from an emotional imbalance or some kind of learned behavior. I think that childhood trauma can create negative learned behavior patterns, when the only release available to stop overwhelming feelings is to engage in certain types of unwanted behavior (usually called "acting out") that as they mature become ingrained coping skills. So while they may seem like actual medical conditions (bi-polarlike mood swings but usually with a trigger, fantasy prone but not really seeing/hearing things, uncontrollable emotional outbursts but again with a noticable trigger--usually to get something or stop something--haphazard, perhaps bizarre behavior, ) they tend to actually be emotional issues (uncontrolled anger, learned manipulative behavior--scream loud enough and people will stop bothering you--lying) Not to say that I don't believe people with these type of issues won't benefit from medication, because they do. Most medical conditions are either present at birth (whereas the outward behavior is noticeably less than normal) or at early adulthood. Male's are especially prone to manifest conditions such as schizophrenia between the ages of about 17 to 22ish suggesting (IMO) that chemical changes in late puberty may be a trigger. Like I said, a difference between medical and mental condition.
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i have taken the antidepressant, celexa, for about fifteen years. i don't have any side effects, and it has made a major difference in my life.
they do't solve any of my problems or issues - i do that now - but being on antidepressants gives me the ability to move forward and tackle things in my life that contribute to or exacerbate my depression.
the right combination for me has been antidepressant therapy and personal therapy. someone may be able to do it with personal therapy alone (i couldn't have) but you cannot tackle depression effectively with antidepressants alone.
i believe that's why many people don't 'get results' from their prescribed medications. they think it's a cure pill.
they do't solve any of my problems or issues - i do that now - but being on antidepressants gives me the ability to move forward and tackle things in my life that contribute to or exacerbate my depression.
the right combination for me has been antidepressant therapy and personal therapy. someone may be able to do it with personal therapy alone (i couldn't have) but you cannot tackle depression effectively with antidepressants alone.
i believe that's why many people don't 'get results' from their prescribed medications. they think it's a cure pill.
Depression is not the same as sadness, grief, or pain - though it can cohabit with those things.
What depression actually is, is mind altering aversion, lack of motivation, and lack of energy. It may also entail feeling hopeless and helpless. It effects your decision making, possibly your appetite, may cause insomnia, and can screw up your memory and concentration - all of which worsen the situation and make it more difficult to recover.
If you can will yourself into activity then you're likely not very depressed, just maybe sad instead, because what depression does is take away your will itself. It may be transient and temporary, so you can luck out of it, but that's often circumstantial and not really your doing.
You're not entirely in charge of yourself, and that is the problem. If you were in charge of yourself in this regard, then you'd have to be somehow immune to these unwanted and involuntary effects, which would take away the essence of depression - pretty much making it your own fault if you continue to have it. But that isn't the case.
What depression actually is, is mind altering aversion, lack of motivation, and lack of energy. It may also entail feeling hopeless and helpless. It effects your decision making, possibly your appetite, may cause insomnia, and can screw up your memory and concentration - all of which worsen the situation and make it more difficult to recover.
If you can will yourself into activity then you're likely not very depressed, just maybe sad instead, because what depression does is take away your will itself. It may be transient and temporary, so you can luck out of it, but that's often circumstantial and not really your doing.
You're not entirely in charge of yourself, and that is the problem. If you were in charge of yourself in this regard, then you'd have to be somehow immune to these unwanted and involuntary effects, which would take away the essence of depression - pretty much making it your own fault if you continue to have it. But that isn't the case.
Yeah, some times you need something to counteract the inertia and give it a push in the other direction.
Your body can in fact shut down too, that happened to me and I got chucked into a ward because I'd gone catatonic and couldn't even eat. After about a week I started to come around but still had so much anxiety from trying to interact with anyone that my whole body would start tremoring as if I were trying to hold down a jackhammer. Then I flipped and managed to do $2000 in damage to a room that's supposed to be safe and tamper proof (they sent me a bill for it...) wrecking the bed and barricading the door with its remains, which didn't work anyway because the doors were designed to release a latch so it becomes a door that opens both ways. It took me about a month to get out.
Just to add... depression may be circumstantial or may be not. I've heard first hand that you can catch it for no apparent external reason. The message here is to look after yourself. If antidepressants help, that's great.
The average person is so affected everyday by chemicals, radiation, air pollution and all kinds of unnatural health issues.
Taking unnatural pills to even up in order to get back to balance seems fair to me.
I strongly recommend striving to live a healthy, balanced life eventually, and leaving the pills behind after a period of time, whether if it's a month, a year, or a decade.
Nutrition, physical activity, purpose, relaxing activities, hobbies. These are things many people underestimate, and it's a shame; as these things really contribute to one's mental, and physical health and balance.
Taking unnatural pills to even up in order to get back to balance seems fair to me.
I strongly recommend striving to live a healthy, balanced life eventually, and leaving the pills behind after a period of time, whether if it's a month, a year, or a decade.
Nutrition, physical activity, purpose, relaxing activities, hobbies. These are things many people underestimate, and it's a shame; as these things really contribute to one's mental, and physical health and balance.