Recently in a Sociology lecture the teacher said that anti depressents were placebo's.
This topic was brought up because of the recent media about this group of medication.
I was just woundering if this was an accurate statement, and how people feel about the media have portrayed anti depressents.?
When i first heard what my teacher said ( as i have been on anti depressents) it made me paranoid that psychiatrist have been lying to me, tricking me.
It's a load of rubbish, what an irresponsible thing to say. Firstly what your teacher said is clearly incorrect because no medication can gain a license unless it proves that it performs better than a placebo. So there goes his theory just by the very fact that anti-depressants exist and are available to the public.
I think the media is overhyping the recent study that said for mild to moderate depression anti-depressants have little effect. Things to remember however, which the media don't particularly stress, is that this is only 1 study, many others say that anti-depressants do perform better than a placebo. Secondly, the study did say that it's only for mild to moderate depression that anti-depressants aren't particularly appropriate, more serious forms were shown to respond better to anti-depressants.
if they didnt work they wouldnt give them to us right.
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You have to think about how much they cost and how much trouble your doctor would get into if you did something and he';d only been giving you a placebo. Also, I don't know about you, but I have to have lots of blood tests for my antidepressants etc, and I doubt they'd go to thast trouble if they;'re placebos.
If i were you the first thing that I would be doing is reporting that lecturer!
First of all no Sociology lecturer is qualified to make a statement like that and no Sociologist worth their salt should be describing as fact something that has just been said in the media (that is the opposite of what sociology is about, it's about breaking society down into its core elements and discarding so called 'common sense' and media hype and then building up an accurate picture of why things really are as they are!
That recent study was very , very limited and has been referred to previously referred on to set levels of depression, basically flash in the pan that ll more likely than not be reversed by a future study!
By the way I say this as someone who has a uni Diploma in Social Sciences and who has been on anti Depressants for several years.
Yeah, people were discussing it last week, pissed me off abit. Well it clearly seems to have worked on me, don't get me wrong, I'm not happy, just high and spacey most of the time.
Feel free to PM me any time; whether you want support or just a chat! x
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antidepressants have been tested against placebos, and have consistently preformed better. it's scientific fact. i'm sorry that your sociology teacher is full of crapy
antidepressants do not, however, work for everyone, and antidepressants alone usually do not work as well as psychotherapy, alone or in combination with meds.
but psychiatrists believing they work and continuing to prescribe them definitely doesn't prove they work! there are a really disturbing number of people out there who continue to administer treatments that are actually shown to cause harm, let alone ones that just aren't proven to work.
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but psychiatrists believing they work and continuing to prescribe them definitely doesn't prove they work! there are a really disturbing number of people out there who continue to administer treatments that are actually shown to cause harm, let alone ones that just aren't proven to work.
I know, I only meant that the reason they prescribe them is because they believe they work. Nothing to do with whether or not they are right to believe they work. (Even though I think they are right to.)
Probably not!
And neither would it do the above, and then on another occasion [with a different med] calm you right down and give you the best night's sleep you've had in your life?!
Hmm there's this research that states that anti depressants don't work any better than placebo's. It doesn't say that they are placebo's, nor does it say one can't experience side effects/benificial effects from them. The researchers talked about 'the placebo effect' which means that if someone thinks they are taking a certain medication and been told it has this and this effect on them, they start experiencing it. Which can be a very good thing, really. It's hard to deny the placebo effect with any medication and nobody can really explain it but it works that way. Like my stepmom when she worked in the hospital and the kids were like 'nurse, I can't sleep' 'ok we'll give you a sleeping aid' they just gave them basically sugar in pillform or something like that, lol, and the kids slept really well. :P
In the uk they can only give placebo's in clinical tests, where the subjects are aware that they might get the placebo. They cant just give it out randomly ?
No of course they don't tell you you're taking a placebo, that'd render the results useless. They recruit participants on voluntary basis for those researches tho, so the people being the 'subjects' know what they're in for and they know that they might possibly get a placebo. But they don't know whether they get the medication they're testing or the placebo. With anti depressants and a lot of other medication in human medicine it's tricky, tho: you can't really hand out placebo's for life threatening diseases. It might be voluntary but well how 'sane of mind' are people who suffer from mental illnesses, do they see the consequenses, etc...so it all remains a very tricky business.
This whole thing has mad me increasingly paranoid:(
I think i would feel really angry if i was given a placebo, outside a clinical test that i was aware of. (ive asked mental health services). Not only would it be illegal, it would be unethical and would break down trust.
I feel alot safer now i thought it through and asked my MH team and you here.
I think its good that a placebo might work for someone, i just dont think it appropriate to treat my level of problems or others with a wide range of problems. What would the point in giving a placebo to someone who was highly suicidal, and well basicly "ill". Wouldnt that count as life theatening ?
Sorry if i sound angry. It just annoys me so much.
Well not sure i want to get involved in this one but lol here goes.......
From my point of view i dont think they are a placebo.i just think they work for some and not others.i cant explain how or why.i just know no meds i tried previously [and its a long list,they dont prescribe to me anymore as docs are satisfied meds wont help me] worked for me hardly at all whereas for a friend they have worked heaps.i just think different things work for different people.Cant explain why or how.i just know it worked for her and not for me.i dont think that just cos it only works for some means they are placebos though.i think thats quite a big statement to make.An interesting one to ponder though.........
Last edited by Sleepless123 : 09-03-2008 at 04:46 PM.
Reason: To add a bit!!!
And all you want is sleep/But all you get it pills
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How soon people forget that studies like this have been performed within the past 5 years. Many studies in fact. Yeah, it's nothing new, it's nothing amazing. It's the same data slapped on a sheet and resubmitted to the public.
I personally think antidepressants are overprescribed to people who just don't need them. There is such a thing as a chemical depression and situational depression. In either case though, one would assume the best result would be to start out the patient on some sort of therapy regimine. No, that's not how society works. Some human beings [or dare I say most] in this day and age are searching for the quickest fix out there. Pills are just that. They have no time for therapy, and boy isn't it so ideal that you can take a pill that will solve your problems?
To get to the point, the article does say that antidepressants are only highly effective in people suffering from severe or endogenous depression. I don't know about the rate of efficacy of the antidepressant, but I believe it should only be used in those cases. And God do I stress the idea of therapy. I can't think of how many people wouldn't need these medications if they had proper therapy.
This study is flawed. I'm sure we have many here who have tried countless medications and then miraculously found one that worked. Can we possibly say the same for this study? That perhaps the results were flawed, because some people respond to differently to certain antidepressants than others? They only used four different antidepressants [Paxil, Prozac, Serzone, and Effexor]. How many of you out there can say that you've had to try more than four antidepressants to find one that worked? Basically, this theory they're trying to make is very difficult to prove, and even though it's been attempted before, there needs to be a peer who comes along who approaches it differently before conclusions can be made.
I'm honestly not as pissed about this as I am amused. I'm amused by the fact studies have been done on this before, and that the media is just catching wind, that the large drug companies are now feeling as if they have a reason to panic or explain themselves, and funny enough it's all over ONE STUDY that happened to get media attention.
I am pissed however that the victories that the psychiatric community has made over these years haven't been as "praised" as this.
Last edited by romancandle : 10-03-2008 at 07:46 AM.
is it possible that your sociology teacher is a scientologist?
there are hundreds of clinical trials conducted on medications before allowing them to used for anything. they are compared against placeboes. trial have to have a minimun sample group, which is i think at least 100 people with the illness to be treated.
so one study is unlikely to rule out those hundreds of clinical trials.
i do agree that many people are on anti-d's that shouldn't be. they should be a last resort, when therapy fails, or as an accompaniment to therapy.
but thats just my two cents...
Annie
