lol

Nice.

I thought Zen was Spartacus?

I can't keep all the Spartacuseseses (Spartaci?) straight around here.

Half of us on antidepressants are on them for anxiety problems, not depression



were you guys waiting for me to come around and point that out

Well, my initial diagnosis, some 15 years ago, was chronic depression (you know, before it was all en vogue.) ;)

Finally, a year ago, I was diagnosed additionally with anxiety attacks (disorder?) So that's a different script.

SSRI every day, and anti-anxiety when really really needed.

Performance enhancing drugs.

Like Viagra?

If you feel confident and happy for more than 4 hours, see a doctor.

esnicker

Ten percent taking antidepression meds means that ten percent of the population has been diagnosed as depressed.

The actual number of people suffering from depression will be much higher.

or lower...

I admit to my belief that unless it is a true "clinical depression",
there would be alternatives to Rx medications.

The world got along without them for quite a long time.
Unfortunately, for those with true clinical depression,
the options were scarce and awful.

My bias is against the pervasive TV ads for these meds,
and physicians who simply write the script and collect their fee.
In part this is based on the article stating:

I agree with most everything said above. There is probably overdiagnosis, due to complacent doctors, marketing from drug companies and such. Current levels of depression are probably caused by modern lifestyles and the strange sea of chemicals we now live in. There is the assumption that if you're not happy, something is medically wrong, and that it can be fixed with a pill rather than changing your lifestyle.

I want to add:
Is it that antidepressants are overused in the US, or underused elsewhere?
Countries outside the OECD spend their health resources on life-and-death fights - malaria, TB, malnutrition, cholera etc. Anyone who is merely depressed can get along on their own, or fade away and die.

The OECD has much higher suicide rates than poorer countries, despite having much better living conditions. My guess is that anyone in Calcutta who doesn't have a strong will to live has already died of some disease, and has no need to actively end it all.

My father is a Dr of Pharmacy who talked and practiced for 52 years. He always joked, "better living through pharmaceuticals" should be catch phrase for the last 20 years.

My PTSD manifests thru anxiety and obsessive compulsive behaviors. Me off my meds is not something most people would want to see. Many of you have seen the changes in my behavior online when the VA lets me run out of meds

Half of us on antidepressants are on them for anxiety problems, not depression



fuckers aren't reading my posts again

Sarge

This is a story from the local university about a new treatment for PTSD. I am absolutely not a doctor, but I do keep up on the news. This sounded very interesting. I hope you can make some use of this information.


Learning to not be afraid: UW psychologists treat PTSD with drug known to enhance learning

I read your post man Is this a good time to mention that I will be ending all my comments using man as punctuation man

I know this is neither here nor there, but I just had to chime in to say how close to home this line hit for me.

I spent about 8 months on SSRIs last year after Life got to be too much -- the stress of being a teacher paired with my father-in-law battling cancer shut me down to the point where I couldn't function on a daily basis.

This summer, with the school year done and Dad on track to good health, I met with my doctor and made the decision to wean off the medication.

Then the school year started back up.

Earlier this week, I found myself wondering if wrapping my car around a tree on my way in to work would mean I could take a few weeks off.

I'm headed back to the doctor tomorrow morning.

Part of me feels like a failure, like surely I could keep my self together without chemical help. The rest of me recognizes the honest fact that I can only do so much on my own, and I wouldn't be doing much of anything if I ended up in a ditch down a wooded road one morning.

good for you, Choco.

hang in there. You don't have to suffer depression. I'm glad you're going to the doc tomorrow.

Do they really lower the anxiety that is caused by stress? My episode was caused by an intense overload of prolonged stress and anxiety. Imipramine did diddly squat for it. My problems only went away when I quit my job. I was prescribed prozac after the fact. I wonder if it would have worked beforehand?

Just don't think you are turning into one of the Blue Man drummers :mg: when your pee turns blue.
/

That number is way higher than 10%!

Especially if you count the schizophrenics twice.

Plenty of room in this handbasket.

:lol: Oh you naughty person. People. Tripod.

lamp, from your post.

Of course people are getting the scripts from their regular doctors. Regular doctors have psychiatric training as part of their core of study. I don't know if you're suggesting people would be better served to be referred to a psychiatrist or PsyD for meds that are to a depressive what diabetics meds are to a diabetic.

For one thing, I think it would preclude a lot of people getting the help they need. Specialists are expensive, even with insurance. Some people might think "I don't need a freaking shrink" (stigma) and not pursue it.

My doctor, a D.O. has known me for many many many years. He talks to me and listens to me. I have faith that he is working with me for the best 'cocktail' to get, and KEEP, my depression under control. Honestly, I wish I had known about such things when I was in college. I wish depression were "over-diagnosed" then, and I might have gotten help much earlier.

At any rate, to add fuel to your fire (well, not really a fire, more a reasonably contained campfire) ;) I am now on a second SSRI. I've been on the main one so long, doc thinks my body says "Oh, I see you have enough seratonin now" because the SSRI is blocking the reuptake. So this second one is supposed to "boost" if you will the first one. The first one is doing its job, so it wouldn't make sense to try to wean me off. (The main one is also the one with the shortest half life of the SSRIs and withdrawal, even for one day, is brutal.)

So, UT...I'm reading your posts. I don't know why my SSRI doesn't take better care of my anxiety attacks. I think it did for a while but I really believe perimenopause and worse PMS are taking their toll. My anti-anxiety is prescribed for pms, but I use it when I start to recognize I'm about to have an attack. And it really helps me to not blow things clear out of proportion.

Choco, hang in there girl. I know exactly what you mean about the car and the tree. You don't really want anything bad to happen but you have moments when it sounds like some sort of relief...to rest, to not have to DO, to have someone else take care of things for a while. I hope you feel better soon.

My bloodwork numbers were BETTER than they were 5 years ago. I'm glad it's not blood sugar or thyroid or whatever, but I must admit I was hoping for something that didn't make me feel more crazy.

But I'm not crazy. My doc says so. My best friend says so. I do have issues from my past I've never dealt with, and the next step is to contact the employeecare on campus for a recommendation. No, I don't WANT to talk about that stuff. That's why I don't talk about it. To talk about it makes it too real. Otherwise, I can just think about those things in a vague detached kind of way. Something blurry from the past. But I guess that option has left the building.

IM, ... no evil intended

My OP spoke to medical schools and the AMA training more practicing physicians to emulate your D.O.

That business about mental health workers and psychiatrists came from the original article...
and frankly I took it to be the sort of hierarchical turf war that is so prevalent in medicine.

It's just evident from the numbers there is a lot of Rx-abuse going on, from many sources.

Oh, I know no evil intended. I was just running thoughts through my head, from the perspective of a long-term SSRI taker.

I am sure, like any profession, there are 'bad' and 'good' doctors. I think the difference is that a doctor prescribing oxycontin and the like all willy nilly presents much more danger to the patient than a doc maybe over-prescribing SSRIs. Except for finding out that young people are certainly not good candidates for that mode of treatment, and the occasional suicide from someone who is on an SSRI (which, we don't know how far gone, how likely they were to do so anyway) SSRIs are relatively safe. You don't feel a high, nothing happens instantly, it's a slow move back to utilizing the chemicals your brain needs to fire correctly. I wouldn't take them recreationally, that's for sure.

Just foods for thoughts.

Also, once diagnosed, the meds are no longer needed to be prescribed by a psych-doc. Maintenance goes to the family doc. I was diagnosed and spent the first year under a psych-doc, but I was a waste of his time by the end.

One notices that the words "just evident" were decided upon with only one piece of actual evidence.

just another two cents in: in my area of the state it's really tough to get in to see a psychiatrist. First appointments can take up to six months and that's IF they will take you on. A Big "IF"

I do admit to bias here.
In very small part it comes from events in my own family
when my grandson was put on Rx followed by new issues of suicide.
But for the most part my comments came
from the cumulative of the published CDC report.

My OP also showed my bias against the ubiquitous TV drug ads.
Here is one journal report I found by one google search
I've re-arranged their findings on "consumer beliefs" for clarity.

Please note, where this "research" was published,
and the lack of acknowledgment of the funding source.

Marketing Health Services
Peyrot M et al.
Loyola College, Baltimore, MD, USA.

So what to conclude is the purpose of TV drug ads ?
I would re-word their Conclusions, based on their results as:

Media exposure and drug advertising awareness were associated with
higher (specific, proprietary) drug (awareness) and a greater
probability of (specific, proprietary) drug requesting.
.

You know, I heard that some people on antidepressants are on them for anxiety problems, not depression

Cite!

...

Oh, cite

You were supposed to say here and here and here and here and here.

Nyah nyah, fooled you!

I had a 5 minute session with a psychiatrist who dismissed me with, "I doubt you're depressed" but recommended to the daycare team that I stayed on my medication to reduce anxiety. Subsequent mental health specialists tweaked my medication and now I think I am as stable as any "normal" person.

I'm still a worrier, but I never had any idea how much anxiety ruled my life until I stayed on anti-depressants for long enough for them to take effect.

I still don't know exactly what I take them for, but I rarely - if ever - get the fight or flight physical reaction for non-physical reasons. Example I will not feel my stomach drop followed by nausea just because I get an unexpected letter/ Yes my finances are as rosy as they can be, but it's chicken and egg - I return phone calls and open letteres and deal with things before they grow tentacles these days.

Another example, I accept training and advice as just that. I do not go into school feeling sick to my stomach because someone pointed out a better way to do things the previous day. Constructive criticism no longer makes me physically ill.

And I have far less violent dreams :)

I do still get an adrenaline fear reaction if I trip slightly, or someone steps in front of me unexpectedly, my fingertips tingle. At its most extreme it gives me a jolt like putting the car into the wrong gear while driving - inside my head.

But even if there were a medication for that I don't think it would be worth bothering with :) It's just that so few people I know experience it. As I have said before, I am just easily spooked.

Oh I do. Its just like that feeling you get when you are falling asleep and all of a sudden you feel like you have fallen. You wake yourself up wondering if your whole body jerked or not.

Oh my whole body definitely does jerk. It happens at least once a week as I'm falling asleep, I violently jerk awake again for no reason. Mr. Clod thinks it's hysterical.

Well described, Pico. It's that violent.

Clod, I've never had anyone witness it.
I've jerked awake, but my partner has stayed sleeping, so I've never known.
So it's always made me laugh the idea that if you have a bad dream or you jerk awake you immediately sit up in bed because it's tv/ film shorthand for a disturbed mind.

I've woken enough people with my nightmares to know that my flavour of them does not match tv/ film at all! No sitting up in bed. No screaming. No mumbling of words or tossing and turning. Just a low "nh-nh-nh" noise getting louder and louder. In the nightmare I am trying to scream and find myself unable, as the horror approaches me.

And, no- if you heard it you would not confuse it with a sex noise!
Eventually I wake myself up.
In the distant past I was woken up by the person I had just woken up,, if you get what I mean. These days I wake up Mum in the room next door, she thinks "Nightmare" and goes back to sleep.

Y'know. It never occurred to me but, I take a regular medication to bring down the histamine response, which also acts as a mild sedative and can be prescribed purely as a treatment for anxiety. It's a way to short out that itch-stress-itch-stress escalation.

I do wonder if part of the reason I'm generally more stable in my moods over the past few years might be because of that medication.

Antidepressants are also prescribed to treat hot-flashes in women whose menopause is induced by chemotherapy. My friend eventually gave up and and took them and reports that they don't really work all that well for that. but she's a lot less anxious! :lol:

I didn't go to a shrink to be diagnosed with post natal depression and quite frankly, if i'd had to wait even a week to start getting the problem under control, I probably would have done serious harm to myself or my child, and that's no joke.

Yes, psychiatrists etc serve a good purpose, and I've seen shrinks before, but in some cases, the need is more urgent than their own importance.

I've had this theory that it's caused by television & advertising. Most TV shows portray a life filled with all the modern conveniences, gadgets, and fashions. The advertising during these shows is geared to cause you to think that you're a schlub if you don't buy the product being advertised. It can make you feel that if you don't live up to those standards, to that lifestyle, that you're a failure. Being a failure is so depressing.