Gah. So it’s better to be the guy who thinks one study completely undermines every positive experience with the drug, and that the whole thing has to be a placebo effect because one study said so, despite the fact that other studies and personal anecdotes say otherwise.
In fact, as was pointed out (if you paid attention), the actual depressed people did do better on the drug than placebo. So this doesn’t fit the it’s only a placebo theory, either.
AS for the question asked by Indistinguishable:
I think the studies are flawed in that it presumed that all SSRIs work the same, when, as anyone whose actually used them knows, they don’t. Different people seem to respond better to different ones. If you just assign them randomly, the ones that worked are going to be canceled out by the ones that didn’t. leaving the numbers statistically similar to placebo. The fact that those with severe depression actually did better indicates that the placebo group’s positives and the experimental groups positives were not among the same population.
As for the actual article, it keeps pointing out that 75%-82% is efficacious in both placebo and experimental. Guess what? That means that the drugs are 18%-25% more effective than placebo. That’s still a clinically significant difference. It’s pure propaganda to say this means that the pills are just placebo. They actually do what they are supposed to do, even if that’s not as much as everyone thought.
Actually, I do know this, now. I didn’t then. But thank you for posting about it. It helps to have this information out there! As it turns out, my psychiatrist didn’t suspect bipolar either until I totally flipped out on the Zoloft. That was her clue to my condition.
Anyway, the point I was attempting to make was that if, as Lissener said, “a placebo would tend to work the way you expect it to,” then my lack of knowledge about bipolar disorder made me unlikely to expect a positive result from the lithium. I knew enough to know it was a treatment for bipolar disorder (which my uncle had), but not enough to understand the finer details. It worked in spite of what I expected, not because of it. Which suggests that my improvement wasn’t a placebo effect, but an effect of the drug itself.
Fortunately, I’m off all drugs now. (Yay!) My theory is that the lithium got me stabilized to the point where therapy could have some effect. But if I ever need something again, I’ll keep this in mind.
How is this relevant to the thread? I don’t know. I meant to relate this all back to the OP, but I’ve forgotten the point I was trying to make. Oh, well. Anyone got some memory drugs??
Having recently been involuntary commited, I’ll say that I was totally appalled at the way drugs are forced onto people in that situation. I wasn’t there for more than two hours before I was handed a pill by a total stranger and was told to take it. When I informed him “I don’t do drugs,” I was told “This isn’t a drug. This is medication.” Did he think I was a total idiot? I was never informed what it was, what it did, and the potential side effects.
It took me 14 hours to get food, and 38 hours to get basic toiletries. But the pills are shoved at you.
When they finally forced me to take this anti-depressant, in an hour I was climbing the walls and belting out show tunes. Then I was told I needed a sedative :D. My singing voice is bad that I think they released me because of it.
I had a pill problem decades again, and forcing me to take drugs was akin to George Orwell’s Room 100. I will always think of it as being given the Taliban treatment: Being locked up, tortured, and stoned.
Anyone should have the option NOT to take drugs, but apparently that isn’t true.
People seem to really really want to believe that forced psychiatric treatment is a thing of the distant past and its snakepits. It’s not.
And to force mind-altering medication on someone involuntarily is to assault them in a very personal and intimate and emotionally shattering manner.
It should be illegal to do so. Involuntary incarceration on the basis of something they merely think you might do, as opposed to something you actually did, is bad enough.
The Dope is a strange place - not exactly a random sample. Its also quite possible that our proportion of people with moderate to severe depression is higher than the general population and/or we are less likely to medicate mild “cheer yourself up” depression than the general population - so the people reporting in have been those people for whom antidepressants do work better than placebos.
Thank you. I could not be put in prison for something I might do. If I had been convicted of 29 rapes and served my time, even if I told everyone I would rape again, I could not be held in prision. But because someone said I was suicidal, I could be lndefinitely locked up.
As a going away present, I got a prescription for a drug which, when combined with a “Hannibal Lechter special” (liver, fava beans and a nice Chianti) would cause instand death. There is something extremely wrong with that.
It should be mandatory that you are given a written statement of waht the drug is, what it is supposed to do, and any side effects before it is forced on you. Having a person yiou never saw before in your life hand you a cup with a pill and telling you that you have to take it is frightening.
[hijack]
We do have a political movement against forced treatment and involuntary psychiatric incarceration. One of our major movement founders just died recently.
Those of you who feel this way should snag a copy of her book; it’s out of print but you can get it in the library.
This study is not new, but basically confirms a lot of what many researchers have been moving towards in recent years. Antidepressants can help people who actually have depression, whereby depression means the real thing: thoughts and plans of suicide, utterly bleak view of the future, uncontrollable crying fits, physical shaking, inability to sleep, other bizarre physical symptoms, and a feeling that one is going insane. Antidepressants cannot help people who are feeling a little bit blue because they didn’t get a raise or their team didn’t reach the Super Bowl. The problem is that the definition of “depression” has expanded over the past few decades. It formerly covered only the first group, but now it covers the second as well. Not surprisingly, the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for this. They’ve spent billions of dollars on outreach to doctors, advertising, and even hiring celebrities to go on “Oprah” and talk about depression.