I have another thread going about a side-affect I’ve experienced from Mirtazapine, when I thought of something worthy of it’s own thread.
What is the placebo effect of anti-depressants? I’ve stopped taking mine for a while, and noticed that I did in fact get more anxiety and depression, but the whole time I was constantly aware and anxious about the fact that I was no longer taking my medication.
Also, unlike Lexipro, I did not notice a vast difference in mood. I assumed it had a gradual positive effect, but at the same time I was making a conscious effort to change things in my life that were causing stress to begin with.
So I wonder how much I need this medication after all.
How do doctors ween you off of anti-depressants, anyway? Take it every other day?
FYI . . . not consulting you as doctors . . . I have open dialogue and am conferring with my doctor, but I wanted some 3rd party opinions as well.
All drugs with any psychological component (meaning even things like cold and pain medicines) have a placebo effect. It is a very powerful effect and not completely understood. The placebo effect is one of the things to beat when drugs are tested in trials.
Depends on the anti-depressant. Sometimes it’s possible to reduce dosage, sometimes frequency, sometimes another drug can be used during the weaning to prevent potential problems.
I work on the chemical testing of pharmaceutical products, and trust me, you cannot tell the difference by weight or by appearance of a clinical trial placebo versus the active drug. In order to get approved, the pharmaceutical company needs to prove through exhaustive clinical trials (usually double-blind) that Drug X has a significant impact on illness Y, as compared to a placebo. In most cases, the group of patients receiving the placebo will report a positive change in their illness/pain/depression/etc (and occasionally a negative change - the nocebo effect!) but objective and subjective testing as well as statistical analyses will be able to show that the positive change reported by patients taking the “real” drug is in fact significantly greater than those taking the placebo only.
In your particular case, there is a good chance that part of the benefit you are getting is from the placebo effect, but a more significant part is coming from the active drug itself. Your doctor could* secretly start putting placebos in your prescription bottle and odds are, you would feel as if your symptoms are getting worse.
*well, he couldn’t, unless you were part of a clinical trial, but yaknowwhatimean!