Many of us know or know of students who have taken Ritalin or Adderall for test taking, mainly form our age group SATs. And many more of us know about the student in our second grade class room that was given similar medication or a depressant to treat ADD or ADHD when really in our opinion they were a brat that just needed to grow up. Unfortunately our negative opinions about mind altering drugs stay with us even when they are being used appropriately. I recently had a conversation with a good friend that was openly advising another friend to stop his use of antidepressants, and cease dulling his own life with drugs. The friend on antidepressants who was prescribed this medication by a professional doctor was seriously considering discontinuing his use because of the misinformation given to him and the negative connotations associated with antidepressants. I found this terribly disturbing, and after talking with him realized several misconceptions he had about antidepressants.
The first of these misconceptions was the effects of current antidepressants and how they work compared to antidepressants used up until the 1990s. I will address these misconceptions because I feel it is the primary cause of the negative feeling the general public seems to have about antidepressants.
The oldest antidepressant is opium which is a from of oxycotton. This drug is associated with the loss of feelings or care about anything. It is the source of the opinion that antidepressants cause people to feel better because they become emotionless. This drug was highly addictive and is no longer used as an antidepressant. This opinion also comes from the use of MAOIs and some other drugs that in the dosages originally prescribed acted as low grade tranquilizers causing people to become emotional zombies so to speak.
Another common misconception is that the use of Alcohol and a few other common food and drinks can be potentially lethal or cause suicidal thoughts while on antidepressants. This is true with old antidepressants of the MAOI category with respect to Alcohol. These drugs are very rarely used in modern medicine because of a entire parade of negative side effects. Alcohol is not advisable even with current antidepressants, but that is because alcohol is a depressant and being depressed in general makes you more susceptible to the negative effects of alcohol.
The final misconception I will address is that taking antidepressants causes thoughts of suicide. This is technically true but statistically insignificant especially when taken into account how many people stop feeling suicidal after taking antidepressants. In both SSRIs and SNRIs, new forms of antidepressants, these effects appear in only several cases per thousand. Although not a necessarily reputable page I advise anyone with questions about the different kinds of antidepressants to go to the wiki page on antidepressants, because it is broken down into the biochemical difference in the medications and the severity of the associated side effects.
http://www.aafp.org/fpm/2009/0500/p15.html
http://biopsychiatry.com/ssrisnri.html
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/maois/MH00072
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/22/60minutes/main6422159.shtml
2 comments:
While I agree that there are stigmas surrounding antidepressants, I don’t think they are as widespread as you make out. A significant portion of society either takes antidepressants or knows people who do. Roughly 10% of adult males and 15% of adult females take some form of antidepressants. Their use is hardly uncommon. These numbers are roughly 30% higher in both categories than a decade ago. What does this tell us? Are people in general just feeling more depressed? Are we just becoming better at diagnosing depression, or is it simply that we have extended what we consider depression? It’s difficult to come to any conclusion, but we can ask why there is a stigma, however small, surrounding antidepressants.
One element of the stigma probably originates in popular culture. Novels and films depicting dystopias, such as in 1984, are fixtures of modern culture. These dystopian creations depict a world in which emotions are drugged away or sadness is a thing of the past. The idea of humans without emotions is, quite simply, a scary and, yes, depressing idea.
With this said, I believe that one major reason is that some people see the use of antidepressants as an escapist strategy. It can be tempting to say that a person can pull through depression if they just try hard enough, but this is simply not true. Many fail to realize that depression is a real problem that originates from a combination of genetic and environmental traits. Depression differs from sadness in that it is persistent and affects one’s ability to complete everyday activities. There are many cases in which antidepressants are absolutely needed, such as for the persistently suicidal. With this said, however, it is almost certain that a portion of people on antidepressants are not in fact experiencing anything outside what would be considered normal sadness, and it is likely that there are just as many people who go through life unmedicated when antidepressants would greatly increase their quality of life. One way or another, a societal stigma should not affect whether or not a person chooses to take antidepressants when prescribed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118428285736265304.html
http://www.quora.com/Antidepressants/How-widespread-is-the-use-of-anti-depressant-drugs
http://medco.mediaroom.com/
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/depression/DS00175
Depression is real. But anti-depressants are not the solution.
There is a lecture on youtube by Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky were he calls depression the worst disease a human can be afflicted by. He points out that people afflicted with cancer suffer tremendous physical agony, but because of the human ability of the human spirit, are about to see the positives. Cancer patients are oft quoted that although the pain was tremendous, the treatment made them appreciate life, brought them closer with their family, etc. Depression robs people of this human spirit.
Spalosky goes on to describe the very real biochemistry that is involved in depression. It's not a matter of sucking it up and forcing oneself to see the light. Depression is as real a disease broken leg or a brain tumor.
However, the problem lies in the modern medicine's mantra of "a pill for every ill." Western society portrays the brain as a separate entity of the body. And so when treating depressed patients, focus solely on the brain.
This is misguided. The brain is part of the body not differently than the leg is part of the body. Depression is not just a problem in the of the patients brain, but a problem with a patients body.
However in today society, we often do not provide our bodies with what it needs to keep it healthy and happy. The foods we are consume are so massively deficient in the nutrients that our bodies need. There are only about 24 basic nutrients out there that, however our bodies using those nutrients for thousands of reactions, so it's not surprising that a lack of one vitamins or mineral would cause a whole whack of problems.
Antidepressants are the epitome of modern medicines practice of treating the symptoms instead of dealing with what's actually wrong.
Here's a fun fact, two hand full of cashews give the therapeutic equivalent of a dose of prozac. Look it up. Yet doctor's don't prescribe cashews to depressed patients? Why not? First of all they probably don't know very much about nutrition and even if they did, you can't patent cashews....
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