Alternatives for prozac/anti-depressants?

[Maru]

Antidepressant don't heal "by themselves", ok, that's quite obvious.
But please consider that they can *really* help people to heal because they may help them to feel better (which is a good first step to take care of oneself).
Aspirin do not 'heal' a headache, it mainly reduce pain until the body heal itself, but there is no need to suffer if there are way to avoid it.
However AD are more complicated to take than an aspirin and require a professional help.

 

[st.bot.32]

Antidepressant don't heal "by themselves", ok, that's quite obvious.
But please consider that they can *really* help people to heal because they may help them to feel better (which is a good first step to take care of oneself).
Aspirin do not 'heal' a headache, it mainly reduce pain until the body heal itself, but there is no need to suffer if there are way to avoid it.
However AD are more complicated to take than an aspirin and require a professional help.

I agree, it definitely can help some people. Depression isn't something a person can always just will themselves to fix. Sometimes it is every bit as physical and real as a broken arm. Or epilepsy. Some people do benefit from antidepressants.

But what disturbs me though is that in my case, and in the case of many others I know (I lived in a part of the world where a huge percentage of the population were diagnosed with depression) I was NOT suffering from clinical depression. I was unhappy because life was making me unhappy, and after being asked a few lame questions (8 questions. seriously) they threw hardcore drugs at me like venlafaxine which made me lethargic and just unable to make the changes I needed to deal with the things in my life that needed to be fixed. not only that but it mentally messed me up, clouded my memory and it took years to heal from. and then they threw paxil or something at me and I was like screw this and I stopped. i changed my life, dealt with things, and am much,much better off. it was hard. growing up is hard.

i know people who lived on those drugs for years. they are still exactly where they were. getting by. never took initiative to do anything. never went anywhere. never challenged themselves. their abilities and creativity stifled and faded.

its true i can't just blame the drugs. in the end you have to learn to be aware of how things affect you and make your own choices. but society treats these drugs as a crutch, not as a tool to wellness. they tell these people that they are helpless and they need the drugs to get by. there is no critical information out there to make you question whether you are really genuinely depressed, or whether or not you have issues that need being dealt with. and after you have been on these substances for years at a time...

 

[GOD]

I told my doc at the hospital i sometimes have dificulty sleeping and she was going to prescribe me anti depresants . I refused , went to my local doctor and he shook his head and gave me 20 mild sleeping tablets . At the moment i take between 1/3 and one once or twice a fortnight . = i`m not and wont ever be adicted to them unlike if i had acepted the antidepresants wich would have only started working after 6 weeks .

Another doc asked me a few months ago what the diagnosis was from my old doc and when i told him he said that diagnosis is wrong , without knowing me , any facts or my case history and wanted to give me anti depressants . I was shocked and insulted . I`ve never been back .

 

[MissDarling]

the thing is depression is rarely caused by an external factor. It's actually a chemical imbalance in the brain, something that prosac (or zoloft, or a number of others) help correct.

Hate to be a dick, but this chemical imbalance has to come from somewhere, be it psychological (internal factor) or diet (internal/external factor) or something external... Depression correlates with a chemical imbalance in the brain, which doesn't mean the one causes the other.

Actually sometimes it's just genetic, an inherited defect. There have been seven generations of depressives in my family, the ones on medication did better than the ones who self-medicated. Not all depression is like this, obviously, but in some cases it is.

 

[GOD]

Sorry . Again thats not true . Its not genetic . Very many people have the genes asociated with depression and dont get it . Those genes have to be turned on so its the key that turned them on in each individual that has to be found and treated / avoided .

 

[druglessdouglas]

great, now we are telling depressants not to take their medicines now.

physician heal yourself

 

[GOD]

Nobody has said that anyone should not take the medicine that they are prescribed . What has been said is that its been proved lately what many had thought for many years that most anti depressives are somewher between useless and dangerous . That doctors tend to throw psychopharmica at patients . That when children are prescribed psychopharmica many of them get damaged for life and begin a life time career in psychiatry . That one of the main reasons drugs are illegal is because of the pharma industrys interest in pushing psychopharmica . And that psychopharmica doesnt nesecerely treat the illness , most of them just mask the symptoms .

 

[Psychoid]

Yeah it right, antidepressants are useful for some people, but that represents something like 1% of the people have been prescribed them.

If I wanted to I'm sure I could go to my doc and get a prescription of anti-depressants, just by saying that I constantly feel sad and tired.

 

[druglessdouglas]

they did exactly what they were supposed to do for me. i think some people just dont know what depression is and think feeling a bit sad counts as depression.

if you suffer from major depression see a doctor and dont touch psychedelics till you feel better

diagnostic criteria for major depression


1. five of the following are present:
depressed mood*
lack of pleasure or loss of interest*
appetite disturbance or weight loss/gain
sleep disturbance
motor agitation or retardation
fatigue or loss of energy
guilt or worthlessness
concentration difficulties or indecisiveness
suicidal ideation or thoughts of death

2.distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning

3.symptoms not caused by substances or general medical conditions, or normal grief or berievement.

*must have one of these symptoms to qualify

 

[GOD]

If a doctor is good , knows what hes doing and a person realy has a treatable depression then treating them is a good thing . But most doctors havent got a clue and just use symptom lists and say if you have x amount your depressed and should take some magic pills . And he gets paid for prescribing them .

Most of the symptoms you mentioned fit exactly to me and i havent got a depression . I have a personal history and its hard for me to live with it . Many things have happened that i couldnt do anything about and cant change , i have to acept them and i cant and i cant get away from it or get any peace . Giving me anti depressants wouldnt help me but when i talk to doctors they always try to give me some .

A lot oif the problems people have that they call depression would either go away after a while on their own or are caused by drug abuse or are because a person doesnt sleep prperly or they have a guilty conscience . Anti depressants take from 4 to 6 weeks to work and doctors will tell you one of their main actions is to regulate the patients sleeep . Another action is often to sedate a person physicaly and mentaly .

How do i know that . Because i`ve been in annd out of doctors surgerys for the last 37 years with those symptoms . I`ve been prescribed and done cources of treatment with tofranil , imipramine and prozac amongst others . Non of them ever did me or anyone else i`ve ever met any good in the long term .

Did you know that most of the children involved with school masacres in the US had been taking prozac ? Have you ever seen an anti depressant make a person smile or happy ? The effect is mostly similar to a chemical mental castration .

 

[druglessdouglas]

in other words it is your opinion that people with depression should not use anti depressants. we are all entitled to our opinions.

 

[restin]

People with the illness "depression" deserve help if they want it.

People who are sad are simply bored or not content: change your life.

There are corrupt docs, there are wrong diagnoses but don't generalize!

And: just taking pills won't solve the depression. You need to talk etc., that's also what I heard from a psychiatrist

 

[GOD]

"in other words it is your opinion that people with depression should not use anti depressants"

I didnt say that , sugest that or think that . I said :- "If a doctor is good , knows what hes doing and a person realy has a treatable depression then treating them is a good thing ."

 

[????????]

as always the blame is not on the drugs per se. The blame is on the careless doctors who are happy to prescribe them to anyone who complains so they can enlarge their wallets.

In 2005 118,000,000 prescriptions were written for antidepressants. That's around 40% of the U.S. population.

 

[druglessdouglas]

i just think we should all be careful in the advise we give concerning mental health issues. its a complicated matter im sure everyone agrees and none of us are qualified to do anything other than share our experiences. ive had useless doctors in the past happy just to write a prescription and say "next", i know they are out there but IMO if you DO suffer from major depression antidepressants are the answer. sometimes they break the habitual side of depression and give enough energy/enthusiasm to sort the external factors involved in the illness.

mental health issues are something we should handle very carefully unless we want to appear in the news linked to some unpleasant incidents. if you haven't lost any friends to depression it means you are going to at some point in the future. sad but true

 

[GOD]

I totaly agree .

 

[MissDarling]

as always the blame is not on the drugs per se. The blame is on the careless doctors who are happy to prescribe them to anyone who complains so they can enlarge their wallets.

In 2005 118,000,000 prescriptions were written for antidepressants. That's around 40% of the U.S. population.

I agree with you, although it's not always doctors being greedy. A lot of doctors work places that are very understaffed and have very little time to really speak with a patient. I once had a doctor accidentally put me on a medication that interacted with the birth-control she'd just prescribed me because she was rushing around to see other patients. I could have sued her for malpractice, but she didn't mean any harm, so I didn't, I merely called the office to remind her not to prescribe more carefully. Most doctors really do mean well, but it's a hard, exhausting, and often emotionally draining job.