Why isn´t this thread merged with the other depression thread? It´s basically the same debate.

It was not mergerd because I locked the origional "depression chemical Imabalance Doesn't exist" due to exactly the way this is all going now..many people who dont really understand what they are talking about in relation to such a complex topic just spouting out unempathetic and somewhat irrelevant personal opinions. Anrchy wanted to keep talking about it so started another depression thread and some people wanted the origional topic unlocked so I unlocked it.

What I have seen here is people going off on tangets about depression when in reality it seems they dont undertand the phenomenon enough to make these sort of judgements. The whole thing started with the idea that chemcial depression does noe exist..which is what that origional article suggest..then when evidence was put forth that suggests it does exist people wanted to argue that the article linked was not saying that it does not exist but that medication is not the best approach etc..people just playing around with words making things up or making things out to say something they clearly are not saying.

Some people do have real depression, some people have real chemical imbalances and some of them probly go through things that none of you could ever understand..reading this thread just makes me thing people like to talk but they dont think first.

Read the hard facts that are out there and listen to the very few people in this thread who actaully are doctors.

I cant believe how many side topics that have been brought up during this thread.

what causes stress

medical diagnosis

fibromyalgia

chemical imbalance or not

ect. ect. ect.

I just realized how much of a broad topic "depression" is.

So anywho, this is my take/experience with Depression.

I myself have not taken anti-depressants. Nor would I. I have, however, been around/talked to people who have. They all had real problems that caused the depression, they were all "mostly" aware of what was causing it. The anti-depressants did not help them in the sense that it should. It masked there emotions from them and they never noticed until seeing what its like without them.

Upon quitting, they received a flood of emotions they havent felt in years. Emotions they didnt even know they had. And they didnt know how to handle it and it would cause them to cry and hide from the world under there blankets. We are not treating depression properly. It isnt even well known how SSRI's even work or what exactly they are doing! This is not right. This is the wrong way to go about science.

You could say that they have saved lives. I would agree with you to an extent. I would agree that it saved someone from killing one's self. But did not save their life.

It keeps them from feeling the emotions that your body is trying to make you feel. This is all part of a system, a system designed to keep your thoughts flowing correctly. And if you interrupt the way in which your brain works normally, due to the fact that something happened to start the mechanisms that cause depression, especially in masking your emotions you are not truly living.

Alot of time anti-depressants cause a different kind of depression. I would say that it stems from the lack of emotional response to yourself. Without feeling emotions you are emotionally incapacitated.

America - the antidepressant nation?

Published on 14 Jul 2012 by RTAmerica

A Recent study on antidepressants has shown that the drugs have some serious side effects: those taking certain prescriptions could lose their sex drive. It sounds like the whole nation's sexuality is under a threat as, according to the statistics, one in ten Americans takes antidepressants. And it's not only libido people are losing - many of these meds induce anxiety and double the risk of suicide. Psychologist and author Bruce Levine joins RT's Liz Wahl to discuss the issue.

http://www.youtube.com/w...feature=player_embedded#!

Link ---> Types of depression

You guys keep talking about SSRI's. There are many things people refer to as 'anti depressants". Passiflora is an herbal anti depressant..many people claim caapi and harmel are antidepressants..others use St.Johns wort..which is an herbal SSRI..you can find articles online that claim salvia divinorum is a useful antidepressant at the right doses..

To claim that anti depressants only mask peoples true feelings is a gross generalization..again, how do you even know this? Anrchy can you please post some peer reviewed study that found this to be true in all cases?

If you are not that person, and have not lived their life and have to deal with what they deal with than why pretend to have all the answers and claim to know how their depression is working or how or why a certain medicine works for them?

I dont take SSRI's and I dont personally think they are all that great either..I would rather take something like passiflora if I was depressed. I think there is enough evidence to suggest that taking SSRI's the way they are prescribed often can lead to other problems, but that does not mean that for some people they may be useful. I dont have all the data and neither do you, so to say it is all just masking a persons real feelings is a bias that is not fully informed.

We should also be more specific here in relation to what you mean when you say "anti depressants"..what you are referring to is pharmaceutical SSRI's. This is important because not everyone who takes "anti depressants" are taking pharma SSRI's.

I apologize as i have not been very precise. In particular I have been speaking of SSRI's. The data i have is from personal experience with close friends, and my GF and I are currently dealing with this as she has been prescribed Paxil.

I know there are articles (i will try an find) that bring up how they arent dealing with the emotions in the correct way, ie masking them, but your link the the lower levels of oxytocin is one example. With SSRI's, you are only dealing with lower serotonin levels, which IMHO isnt the only chemical that is lacking.

Ive become extremely busy so I apologize for not being able to pay more attention and supply better links. Got a beach trip this weekend

Also when talking about depression, SSRI's are THE MOST commonly prescribed treatment for depression. So its only natural that a lot of discussion is on the number one medication.

I think just the fact alone that someone can take mescaline, ayahuasca or ibogaine etc and be completely rid of their depression afterwords and have their whole outlook on life rearranged is evidence enough to assume that chemical intervention can be a powerful treatment for some people.

"I know there are articles (i will try an find) that bring up how they arent dealing with the emotions in the correct way, ie masking them, but your link the the lower levels of oxytocin is one example. With SSRI's, you are only dealing with lower serotonin levels, which IMHO isnt the only chemical that is lacking."

I dont disagree with you that in many cases of people taking SSRI's constantly that is what is going on..I am just careful here because I dont think that is enough evidence to suggest that that is true in *all* cases..

Well I would say that I am the living proof that serious depression can be entirely a chemical imbalance, can develop with no external cause whatsoever, and can be completely cured with antidepressants.

My depression came out of a clear blue sky. My life was completely perfect in every way - wife, children, good enough house, useful work, liveable income, plenty of exercise/outdoors time, spectacularly healthy diet, no past traumas etc.....but almost every minute of the day was spent thinking of ways to kill myself, I was completely unable to experience pleasure of any kind and my heart was filled with melancholy and intense sadness 24 hours a day. It got to the stage where I could do nothing but sit in a chair all day with my head slumped on my chest. Pretty bad!

I eventually went to the doctor, and was prescribed Fluoxetine. Within a few days (yes, I know doctors say that is not possible, but that's what happened) I experienced happiness for the first time in years. I stayed on the medication for ten years, as any attempt to reduce was impossible. After those ten years it suddenly felt like I was "cured", and I tapered off the tablets easily over a couple of months.

Nothing in my life had changed in the meantime. My past and my lifestyle were exactly as they had always been. It just seems that something had gone wrong in my brain, and I seemed to need that time of experiencing happiness as a sort of retraining to get me back on track. (When people say that antidepressants dull your emotions, I feel they haven't experienced the full-on nothingness of true depression before they started taking them...for me my time on antidepressants was when I started to feel a range of emotions again.)

So yes, that's my story - hope it provides a counterbalance to some of the rather sweeping opinions/judgements here. Sometimes serious depression can appear with seemingly no cause from the outside world - in which case therapy would be entirely useless, because there are no particular 'issues' to resolve. Well, none that relate to the depression anyway! .

See this is the thing, that doesnt work for everyone although I AGREE with you completely in the way that THOSE should be what are prescribed rather than beta testing on people with chemicals we have no idea what they really completely effect.

Entheogens are a much better approach. But they dont work for everyone. I think that simply learning to deal with your problems should be the other approach. Therapy or some kind of communication of the outlined issues.

Talking about something is extremely important in being able to understand it.

I am glad that they helped you and in no way mean to impose that they dont help anyone.

But you need to be careful when stating that the reason they didnt work for someone is because they didnt feel the full on nothingness of TRUE depression.

This can be seen slightly offensive. As in my case my gf and I are battling her depression. And believe me she has felt the full brunt of "full on" depression.

taking one look at the typical mainstream western diet it is not hard to imagine why chemical imbalances could just come out of nowhere and cause people to go downhill quickly.

Did they test your levels of serotonin before prescribing this? Thats my point, they throw some pills at people thinking thats the issue.

In your case it worked. I am VERY happy for you as your case seems very serious and yet you came out on top. My gf has been on and off of paxil and related SSRI's for 10 years. They are definitely not helping her depression. As when she is off them she is down constantly and gets angry easily and cries sometimes when its overkill.

When she takes them she feels dull to emotions, and has trouble feeling love and expressing it. Overall happiness is dulled/non existent.

It is different for everyone and there are many many things that cause depression it seems. Not just experiences of the psychological.

[EDIT]
Sorry, I wasn't intending to be dogmatic - I really just meant that, compared to full-on depression, the range of emotions I felt on antidepressants were widened, not dulled.

Sorry, we're posting across each other here.

I am so sorry for your gf, I could just weep - the whole business is devastating, and I truly wish she finds a way through it.



This is an excellent quote, and should be the conclusion of the thread really!

of course some people with depression are happy to be reassured that its a chemical imbalance in their brain that causes their problems!

They are happy to know that they cant do anything against that.

Okay everyone, I get the point! Obviously I was making a brash statement out of pure ignorance and very little experience with depression as, I have never experienced depression other than to the extent of what I would consider an ordinary gloomy feeling or sadness. Also, I have not been around many people who experience depression.

So as Jamie points out here



I’ll admit I’m one of those people, that’s exactly why I came to the Nexus to post this thread, so that I may be informed about something I don’t have much experience with. That way, the people who are experienced in coping with themselves, or treating others, can elucidate and educate the :



Like I’ve stated before, I didn’t understand, so I came to the Nexus to receive the insights of those that are more experienced than me. For that reason I must question why Jamie would want this thread locked or closed in the first place? Due to the information presented here, and the critical responses to my statement, I am now more aware of how depression may affect people, so instead of going out in the real world and ignorantly making a brash statement that could have detrimental effects to someone suffering from depression, I can now act with repose and express empathy.

So it seems counter-intuitive that you’d lock the thread to prevent the uninformed to keep fromm posting misinformation, but in the process it’d disable those who continue receiving the valuable information that’s posted by those who are more informed, seems like that would defeat the purpose. Now those people may be getting information they didn’t have access to, and if you’re concerned about the one’s making the uninformed statements in respects to the people who are seeking important information about their depression, well I think we can give them more credit, in believing that they are able to filter out the misinformation for themselves?

Also I recognize that the title of this thread, along with the article might be misleading.




The article title says that ‘Chemical depression does not exist’ but if you read the article it is simply suggesting that there is no hard scientific evidence to conclude that it is a chemical imbalance, and that we should be more cautious about using pharmaceuticals to treat it.








I think polytrip summed up the article best.

.





I would like to thank everyone who is activley participating in this thread as it's been a valuable learning experience for me.

This is why I personally might suggest healthy dieting and exercise before pharma.

I find it very brave of you to share this with all of us.
Your case is a clear example of how antidepressants CAN be of great value, when properly proscribed and taken.

I think that the anti-antidepressant mood stems from the fact that these med´s are being pushed rather agressively and being proscribed way too often to people who either don´t need them, or to people who are so vulnerable that just simply giving them a pill won´t be enough to realy help them.

But the fact that they are very often not being used in the right way, due to negligence of the doctors proscribing them, is not a valid argument against them. It´s an argument against negligence. Not against medicines.