View Full Version : Todays News Report That Ssris Dont Work
was looking for a thread on this but couldnt find one,so if it has already been started delete this.
my thoughts are if a placebo is just as good you wouldnt be getting all the side effects that go with prozac n the like,they obviously are having some effect good or bad wouldnt you say?
my shrink said the very same thing the other day when i refused seroxat as i cant handle the side effects "the side effects mean the drug is getting into your system and making your neuro transmiters go hay wire-hence you feel bad for 2 weeks,but then they settle down and all alighn with each other and start to do there job"...
i dont suffer from depression but social anxiety,so i cant comment on there effectiveness in this area,and all the news reports just mention depression.
anyway be interested to hear your views
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3434486.ece
pedro:shades:
Hi Pete Ive just been to my docs, after suffering for over 20 years, she has put me on propranolol, which I have taken before, but stopped as I also thought it was a placebo, but she has just said to me if it works or not and they doing some good what the hell, take em, so am gonna give em another go, anything gotta be better than the hell I go through, not on them,
she also put me on some anti- depressants and this is a first for me, I cant find em on here anywhere, they are called Paroxetine Hydrochloride
hope someone can advise me about them as I so dont want to google them
anyways hope this is of some help if not am sorry Im having a bad time at mo
Emma xxxx
Hi Pete,
Please do not be drawn in by the hype surrounding this issue.
The only way for anyone to deal with this is to make an appointment with their GP and talk over any concerns with them.
The difference between todays newspaper headlines and the actual facts is substantial.
Best wishes,
Chalky
I'm an American, and have lived in the UK for a year, so the NHS is still pretty new to me. I've been on an SSRI (Sertraline) before for severe depression and anxiety, and I was sure it helped me, as I was on it for about 8 months, got off, and have felt wonderful for about 4 years. Well, recently the panic attacks started again, with a nice dose of depression to go along with it. I made an appointment with my GP, she talked to me for about 6 minutes, prescribed Sertraline again, and sent me on my way.
After 11 days of taking the Sertraline, I was going absolutely bonkers - felt 1000% worse than before I took the pills.
I quit the meds, made another appointment with my GP, and asked why it made me so crazy this time and seemed to work wonders last time. She explained I'm probably not nearly as depressed as I was last time, and my body probably just doens't need it. NICE - thanks for finding that out before writing out the easy-way-out prescription. Then she suggested talk-therapy, which I think should have been prescribed before the pills.
With the NHS, I definitely believe anti-depressants are the first answer to any depression or anxiety issue, when people really need a variety of options, without having to have extra anxiety waiting something unGodly like 8 months for CBT! Anyways, sorry to ramble, but I think this study is interesting, and if anything maybe it will make GPs and depression/anxiety sufferers think twice before popping pills.
I’m an advocate of psychological treatments and I’m against anti depressants (apart from cases of severe depression). In my own experience, and I guess we can only really go by our own experiences, anti depressants made my anxiety worse. I tried a few different ones, the first I took for a period of 6-8 months and the others 4-6 weeks (I persevered with one particular anti depressant that had such bad side effects I was hospitalised – I should never have been told to keep taking it). I can honestly say that my anxiety/secondary depression would not have gotten to the levels it did had I been offered therapy straight away as opposed to various prescriptions, medication side effects saw me experience anxiety attacks at their very worst. I overcame my anxiety through therapy and I’m confident of staying well thanks to the understanding therapy gave me.
I’m heartened to hear that the governments are at long last acknowledging the benefits of therapy and are putting more money into resources.
Hi Pete Ive just been to my docs, after suffering for over 20 years, she has put me on propranolol, which I have taken before, but stopped as I also thought it was a placebo, but she has just said to me if it works or not and they doing some good what the hell, take em, so am gonna give em another go, anything gotta be better than the hell I go through, not on them,
she also put me on some anti- depressants and this is a first for me, I cant find em on here anywhere, they are called Paroxetine Hydrochloride
hope someone can advise me about them as I so dont want to google them
anyways hope this is of some help if not am sorry Im having a bad time at mo
Emma xxxx
emma,
the paroxetine is "seroxat" one of the top 3 prescribed for depression and anxiety,sorry your having a bad time at the moment,how long have you been taking the seroxat? also you mention the propanalol feeling like a placebo,well its a beta blocker used to lower your heart rate,doesnt really have a great success rate with major anxiety,probably why you didnt feel it helped much.
good luck on the seroxat!
chalky,
i dont read to much into the reports today,listened to the guy from hull university and he said they do help with severe depression but not for mild depression,so he was going back on what he said a lot of the time,and a phone in on 5live,80% of people ringing in said they were of benefit so i do take it with a pinch of salt really.
design2,
i think you make a valid point that ssris will be the first choice gps dish out as soon as u mention depression,panic,anxiety,etc...u get a 5min appointment and they are writing out the script before u have even gone into the history of your problem.
overall i think like all meds some will work for some whilst others work for others,it is all trial and error .
pete
I don't think they are a placebo as such, just that they don't work for all levels of depression.
It kind of backs up my own feelings that they certainly don't do much for anxiety although they are the drug of preference at the moment.
They certainly worked for me the twice I was severely depressed but, for more mild depression and anxiety, they did absolutely nothing for me.
Kate
Three months on from starting a course of SSRIs I feel completely different - happy, energetic and able to enjoy things again. My life is not hampered by the anxiety that has dogged me for much of my life. I appreciate this may be in part due to the placebo effect, but as you say Pedro, I know the pills are having some sort of physical effect as I felt so ill for the first two weeks. Citalopram isn't one of those mentioned in the report, but it's the same type of compound and I can say from experience that it does work.
I would love a course of CBT but unfortunately it is expensive and there is a long waiting list which is why my GP has gone down the medication route while I wait to see a therapist. She told me that SSRIs are a good short-term solution but don't get to the bottom of the actual problem - CBT helps you deal with negative feelings yourself. Without CBT or similar alongside medication, depression and anxiety is likely to return when the course of anti-depressants ends.
Mental health services in the UK are woefully under-resourced and I really hope that this report will bring this issue to the front of the political agenda and make the public more aware. Unfortunately with much of our press intentionally misrepresenting the issues I feer any calls for improved counselling and therapy services will be dismissed as quackery and a valuable opportunity will be lost.
:) hi id just like to add here that you dont have to wait to start cbt, you can get good books and on-line courses. check out livinglifetothefull and uncommonknowledge. emma:winks:
I'm on Clomipramine. They have seemed to cure my panic attacks, but I still suffer from what I would describe as mild depression, probably due to the fact that I am a single mum of 3 working full-time with a newborn grandson as well (not sleeping very well at the moment).
Apart from the depression I feel pretty much ok and think I'm probably on a bit of a downer because sometimes I just crave adult conversation of an evening instead of doing all the homework and housework stuff. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change the kids for the world, but I have been on anti-deps for years and they have really been a life saver for me at times. I have been on Prozac in the past and was fine with them, and if a placebo was on the market that didn't have some of the side effects I would definitely be a guinea pig!
Like a lot of people have said, it depends on the individual. I have tried many different anti-deps over the past 25 years and some didn't agree with me at all, yet others worked brilliantly. I have noticed that nowadays though, rather than my GP go straight for his prescription book, he advises counselling and exercise as the first step. He advised me for CBT but the assessor said it wasn't really for me as I was suffering temporarily from health anxiety, which I seem to have under control now.
Good luck to everyone anyway. If the anti-deps work for you, I say continue!
Les
I had panic and anxiety attacks which onset last July changing my whole world.
I have tried counselling, reading(as many of us do), various herbal treatments. I have engaged in healthy living, a new fitness regime and had to alter my own thoughts to help regain my health over the ensuing months.
I managed to conquer the anxiety and panic attacks to such an extent that I lost my own sense of purpose, lost my spirit of life and fell into a cyclical depressive state which would wash over me from absolutely knowhere............The feeling is the worst nightmare and despite trying everything apart from medication, I was suffering from crying for no appparant reason and hopelessness.!
I am not an unhappy person!
I took to my GP two weeks ago and laid my cards fully on the table. He suggested I had taken the correct and difficult route but it was time to give me the help/lift I required to enable me to collect my own thoughts and rebuild.
The side effects have been difficult, manageable but difficult and they are certainly no by-product of an over zealous mind but that of the tablets I was given. The great thing is that after 11 days there appears to be a definate improvement. If this is continued, I will be eternally thankfull to both my GP, myself and the medication which I believe in because at the end of the day..............one has to.
Personally I wouldn't care if the tablets were placebo....surely it is the fact that they appear to be working that is the most salient point. I would very much doubt however that I would have suffered all those initial side effects.
This is just one report and I don't think we should read too much into it. Of course the government used it to remind everyone that they are going to employ some additional psychotherapists, but that had already been announced.
It is true that things like exercise and some CBT can help beat depression, but all too often people get beyond that point. I was reliant on therapy for three years with no meds and as my emotional scars were so deep I needed that long term approach. The therapy got too tough and I needed to start taking citalopram to help me along, so at present I'm on a twin track approach!
But even now, I get so tense, I find exercise difficult and avoid dedicated exercise, although I do go out every day.
It would be useful if people were told about the early signs of depression and then they could take action as early as possible. If you can, please get out there and swim, do some cycling or whatever - something that you can do safely to keep you fit. Not all of us can do that, so just go as far as you can. For some others, a daily walk in the fresh air may be your limit, or for those with agoraphobia, a trip to the front door and opening it is something.
In all of this we need to see our boundaries and then try and go an inch or two further.
cheers
Just saw it on TV down here and they reckon it's all BS as they only tested people with mild depression.
Drs are warning people not to stop taking their meds abruptly.
They work for my anx so I'm not stopping
Phill :shades:
Just for clarity, the data came not from one but 47 clinical trials. I am not giving anything other than my own opinion here but the drug companies who produce these medications are billion pound industries, of course they’re not going to accept criticism - the NHS are sat on the fence because they’ve already prescribed SSRI’s to millions of people (in England alone they wrote 16 million prescriptions for SSRI’s in 2006, it’s estimated that Prozac for example is taken by more than 40 million people worldwide).
Not all of the data used by The University of Hull team is publicly available and the researchers had to use legislation to get access to some of the data. Apparently, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence who made the original assessments on whether or not SSRI’s should be widely available on the NHS didn’t have all of the data which the researchers used - it would seem that drug companies are not obliged to publish all of their trial data...
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