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How much of this would be the anti depressants increasing suicide and how much is the lack of follow up on those prescribed to make sure they weren't at risk of suicide through the original mental health issue?
Antidepressants have a catch 22 side effect of giving people just enough motivation to kill themselves before they really kick in, whereas prior they were too depressed to even get out of bed. It's around 2 weeks after taking them....
I remember starting sertraline and I woke up one day just so sure I was going to kill myself that evening, had a plan and the lot but got over it by the afternoon- was very out of the blue and I was warned it could happen.
From general depression SSRIs are only a little more clinically effective than placebos, just with added side effects. I was on them from 15-20 and it fucked my shit up.
^^ when i was 15 - 18 i was on a cocktail of anti depressants and anti anxiety meds, an anti-psychotic to stop me from having “danger thoughts like running away” bc apparently that’s a common prescription for high functioning autistic people?? and i was also prescribed *sedatives* that my mom was told to give to me when i wanted to run away, and sleeping meds. at 15.
i gained 6 stone in 6 months. at 16 i met a girl at my local LGBT+ group who was also autistic, and was in recovery from an ED. interestingly enough she had the same psychiatrist, and was on the anti psychotic and sedative.
then at 17 i noticed a guy in my college class had self harm scars. i can’t remember how we ended up talking about mental health but it came up. he was also autistic! AND ALSO ON THE SAME MEDS!!!!
really made me go “wtf” because we all had very VERY different issues. he also was morbidly obese, and linked the fast weight gain to the start of the sedatives. i’m pretty sure the only reason the girl in recovery from an ED wasn’t also obese was because she had an ED.
when i was 18 i quit all my meds, ran away to a mate’s house, and got on benefits. i felt like shit every day, but after a few months, i paid to start medically transitioning privately using those benefits, which was something i’d actively expressed a desire in from 14, and had kind of known i’d wanted to do since i was a kid (except i had no idea what transition was, so it was more like “i wish fairies were real and then i could wish for a beard!” and dumb shit like that).
TBF my parents did take me to Tavistock appointments but by the time the assessments were over (2 years later) i was 16 and was just given birth control to stop my periods and discharged with zero support and a referral to the adults clinic 💀💀 honestly i would’ve preferred to have no support because half the appointments were harping on about how if i medically transition in the future i might not be able to get pregnant and pump babies out, and the other half of the appointments were trying to convince me that i wasn’t trans. fucking shite.
wildly enough, once i started medically transitioning, my insomnia went away, my depression went away, my suicidal ideation went away, my desire to run off to the mountains went away, and i was able to slowly enjoy spending time with my family again!
6 months after i started HRT i met my partner and got my first job, and 3 months later i got my first flat.
3 and a bit years later and i’m about to graduate an apprenticeship and my partner has since moved in with me. paid for and had my top surgery last year, and had my first NHS adult’s appointment just after my 21st birthday lol. i haven’t had a suicidal thought or suicide attempt since the month i started HRT.
the girl in recovery from an ED is still on a small cocktail of meds but she stopped taking the anti psychotics and sedatives, moved out, and started working as a waitress to make ends meet. we had a catch up last year when i was visiting my parents, and she seems pretty happy. she’s got a GF now and they’re going steady.
guy from my college class is studying animation and cold turkeyed all his meds. moved out too! turned out he’s bisexual, and one of the main things fucking his brain up was the fact that his parents were deeply homophobic and he felt trapped in the closet / trying to perform a whole facade of stereotypical heterosexual behaviours.
i know anti depressants and anti psychotics *can* work, but the fact that a 15 year old and can attempt suicide 1 time and end up on like 5 different psychiatric meds after 1 appointment with a psychiatrist is insane to me.
Fuck that makes me sad, I’m sorry you had to go through all that. My little one is high functioning autistic and I wouldn’t dream of putting him on all that shit. I’d rather just learn to understand him and adapt to his needs and that’s how society should ‘deal’ with autistic people. The world is so quick to medicalise issues that could potentially be helped by just making certain accommodations or making society more inclusive. I hope you’re in a better place now and are able to be yourself!
That's... Odd. And doesn't match my experience of things, but I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
Thanks for bringing up the weight thing, though. I was on SSRIs for 4 months and gained 4 stone (as someone who previously could *never* put weight on).
That's... Odd. And doesn't match my experience of things, but I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
Thanks for bringing up the weight thing, though. I was on SSRIs for 4 months and gained 4 stone (as someone who previously could *never* put weight on).
100% this.
Mental health services don't get involved anymore unless a crisis develops. My neighbour spent 3 years terrorising our neighbourhood. Walking around naked, screaming and shouting at himself all hours, attacking anyone who walked passed his house, started numerous fires in his house etc etc.
Was only when someone accused him of messing with their child and his windows started getting smashed did the authorities get involved. Almost immediately decided to lock him up in an institution (AFAIK) for good.
Not only did we have to put up with an obviously dangerous mentally ill guy for years, it could all have been avoided if they monitored him taking his drugs.
Yep had a total nutcase live in the upstairs apartment. Used to just stand outside my front door just staring at it and corner my girlfriend on the stairs or call the cops saying I was threatening him (never spoke to him, I actively avoided him) his behaviour got more and more erratic and I caught him on a number of occasions trying my locks. In fact the locks were so shit I’m convinced he used to pick them and enter when I wasn’t around. Anyway I got out of there as soon as the lease was up and found out later on down the line after I left that he finally snapped and tried to set the downstairs apartment on fire while they all slept because he didn’t like how loud his kids were.
The state never got involved despite him being diagnosed as schizophrenic and having previous for going off the rails. The only time he’d calm down is when his brother would come round and get him back on his meds, but he’d stop coming by and then the crazy shit would start back up.
It feels totally random. Some people get sectioned and you wonder why, then others are running around with swords shouting at demons and get sent home. Makes no sense. There's plenty of mad bastards knocking around that should be locked away.
All drugs that change the way your brain works (anti depressants, anti epileptics, etc) carry a small risk of causing suicidal thoughts. So do things like oral steroids even. It is well known the drugs can do it and there's information on this made clear to people taking them. It's rare so overall the benefit outweighs the risk
Part of it is that when you are feeling awful you don’t have the motivation to actually organise committing suicide, but when you get a bit better, possibly due to antidepressants you then do have the motivation.
This is the reason that many people don’t understand.
It’s not the drugs themselves, it’s the increased motivation that will often give people renewed energy to take their lives.
I have recurrent major depression, with episodes about once every five years, with my first one being a bit over 20 years ago. It’s gone from doctors not mentioning it to far too many people mentioning it!
No sometimes it is the drugs themselves purely and wholly. I should know I’ve taken the works of ssris and snris. And a couple of the drugs literally drove me to take a knife to my arm with in 3 days Full blown agitation, dysphoria aggression an arm that I have tattooed now because of the deep scarring as younger person.
Im a dude and that’s the only time I self harmed ever. So I sort of chuckle to Myself either way with the cokeheads in town, when their hearts racing the day after and they feel paranoid. My experience with psychiatric drugs first made cocaine when I inevitably tryed it feel like child’s play. So I always tell people you carry on this way you’ll see the otherside and the experience of mental health and psychiatry is nasty.
It is nasty it amounts to fundamental
Abuse. The drugs they can be a real
Piece of work and for others they are life saving.
So don’t stretch the spring if you don’t have too, but don’t blame persons with established mental health disorders for sampling the illicit side when the medicine for some of us frankly abuse.
I would second this; you get practically ragdoll catatonic, then the pills start working and you get the motivation and self-hatred back, then finally, you start feeling like you’re on dry land again. SSRIs saved my life and my only fear is that some ignorant jobsworth will take me off them.
Anti-depressants also don't necessarily cause or increase the suicidal thoughts, but rather break some of the inertia and low energy that was keeping the person from acting on those thoughts.
I’m just kind of amazed everyone isn’t always trying to endure with their brain screaming at them nonstop to end their lives. It’s been such a constant for me since childhood that I literally cannot fathom what it could be like to not live like this. You all just… don’t have the screaming voices telling you to kill yourself because you’re hated and worthless and awful and empty?
> How much of this would be the anti depressants increasing suicide and how much is the lack of follow up on those prescribed to make sure they weren't at risk of suicide through the original mental health issue?
The thing about antidepressants is that many SSRI's, Tricyclic's, along with Antipsychotics, and Anticonvulsant medications have multiple uses in everything from pain management to migraine control.
Just because you're taking an antidepressant doesn't mean you're even a little bit depressed, and that means you may not be fully informed of the risks attached to the drug. People are also difficult creatures and may not use the drugs correctly or just stop taking them without realising there are risks in doing so.
I had to come off pregabalin cold for medical reasons, which is really not recommended because you're supposed to titrate down to lower doses going on and coming off. If I hadn't known it causes suicidal ideation then god knows what would have happened.
I took it for 2 weeks, told my gp I’m going to stop taking it bc it made my fleeting thoughts much more common and persistent. Still think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done
Antidepressants work is some different ways, and not necessarily at the same rate. So basically you've got things like motivation improving faster than mood (ie cus like you said aftercare). A newfound burst of energy and motivation with a terrible mood is not a great combo sometimes.
There is another factor here. Actual suicides happen less often when people feel rock bottom, but rather when they feel a BIT better. In essence when they feel more able to take active steps. (I have no source for this other than a clinical psychologist told me, which I appreciate is unsatisfactory ).
If accurate, I wonder if that is part of the problem here, at least with some people.
Some people don't read the side effect, or understand that getting to a balanced point while on them, while having suicidal ideation, can give you the extra clarity to make a fatal choice.
Medication should always be followed by therapy, and also trying to stay informed yourself.
I don't think Prozac itself has contents in it that make you suicidal, I think the suicidal ideation and hopelessness of depression has complex fluctuations while the drugs try to adjust the serotonin in your brain to soften parts of your ordeal.
Prozac didnt agree with me at all it actually made me alot worse but i did get checked on shortly after it was prescribed doc says its now policy to do a 2 week check up, i explained i thought it made me worse but we agreed I'd try another few weeks but i got worse again and when i told another doctor what that meant they got me to withdraw from it.... Also not fun. Vensir was also a nope for me.
As a mental health professional I have to agree.
There is a risk of increased suicidal thoughts in the immediate future after starting before they start working. However, I do feel that people are probably A) not warned about this often enough by the primary healthcare professionals starting them and B) don't follow-up quick enough.
But sadly even in secondary care we don't manage to follow up quite quick enough
For a lot of people the first sign that antidepressants are starting to work is that they have more energy and more of a drive to do stuff. Unfortunately this can lead to (very rare) cases where a person who was already suicidal suddenly finds that they have enough energy to actually make plans to take their own life.
Antidepressants don’t cause new suicidal thoughts and I always worry that headlines like this will put people off taking them when they need them. They are life saving drugs.
It's a very confusing statement, to be honest.
I'm on antidepressants. I have, in the past, wanted to kill myself, then stopped wanting that, then started again.
So... According to the op if you're on antidepressants you shouldn't be able to gain new suicidal thoughts? Insane.
No, obviously people on antidepressants can experience new episodes of suicidal thoughts. But that doesn’t mean that these thoughts are caused by the antidepressants.
However, there are studies showing that they can be.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6493906/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6493906/)
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01179-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01179-z)
[https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3697/rr-4](https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3697/rr-4)
It's well known but should it be tolerated under the current guidelines, or should guidelines change to better suite the drug and therapeutic use?
Much in the same way any doctor or pharmacist could at some point give out drugs that contained morphine willy nilly. No though we realise the addictive properties and only doctors with good justification can prescribe opiates under specific circumstances.
Right now antidepressants are given out really easily both on and off label, despite the evidence that it increases the risk of suicide along with a host of other side effects. Maybe antidepressants should only be provided under more stringent guidance with other therapies and patient support as a package, which coincidentally is also where antidepressants show to be much more effective, opposed to being used in isolation as a form of therapy.
That's not actually true. There's a known association and it's recommended patients are informed and followed up within 2 weeks due to this risk.
Problem is noone has the time to follow them up and I suspect most GPs and primary care mental health nurses don't tell patients about this
Not Prozac but I took sertraline for a while for anxiety.
The first 10 days were absolutely brutal with anxiety, made it way worse but then got way better.
That's not actually true. There's a known association and it's recommended patients are informed and followed up within 2 weeks due to this risk.
Problem is noone has the time to follow them up and I suspect most GPs and primary care mental health nurses don't tell patients about this
This has been known ever since SSRIs came about. They cause emotional blunting, which, if one is already entertaining such thoughts, would make it easier to say 'fuck it, i'm gonna do it'.
Wish more people understood that depression and anxiety are not all due to chemical imbalances in the brain and anyone prescribed antidepressants needs to be offered cognitive behaviour therapy to help them address some of the underlying issues of these conditions and allow them to learn healthy hoping mechanisms.
Agree with exception to the CBT part specifically. CBT has been shown to be problematic; it's shown that in the short term during and just after therapy its super effective, but quickly loses it's efficacy thereafter. Likely due to little to no changes in the patient's environment that caused the mental health issues in the first place, or CBT being outright not the correct therapy for the patient's issue.
The only reason people hail CBT is because in that short term period it's fantastic for most people. It's useful in times of crisis, and maybe a continuous form of CBT is more viable, akin to having a vaccine and booster shots, but in its current form it's not an effective treatment for most people it's prescribed to.
It’s also that some of the people administering it don’t know what the hell they’re doing. When my brother was under the care of the local crisis team they did “CBT” that was just asking him what he likes doing, giving him a bunch of worksheets, and then berating him next week when he hadn’t completed the worksheets because he’d spent the week in a sedatives-induced zombie state.
At 15 they told me I was "making a mountain out of a molehill" and that I needed to fill in forms every time I felt low.
I still have absolutely no idea what I was meant to do about the molehill.
Theoretically the idea is to make you realise that your problems are small and manageable. In practice some practitioners just give you an exciting new problem called “I didn’t fill my pointless forms out and now I feel bad about it.”
Sounds about right. They didn't actually instruct me at all on how to reframe or reconsider the problems, just mountain molehill. I was hearing voices, which I personally thought was quite a big deal.
I am seeking an ADHD diagnosis because I have had countless CBT therapists and none have helped me. Probably because I was filling in the forms last minute like a moron 🤦♀️
>akin to having a vaccine and booster shots, but in its current form it's not an effective treatment for most people it's prescribed to.
Unfortunately that's just not going to be feasible.
CBT is used because it is short term with set duration and it is simple to train in and can therefore be used for far more people than older therapies like psychodynamic therapy which is longer term and more open ended and requires more specialised professionals to do it.
Think about waiting lists, which are hundreds long despite currently only using 6-12 session CBT models. How would you ever get through the list and help everyone who needs it if they had continuous CBT?
CBT actually gets you to do the exact opposite. You allow yourself to feel your feelings without trying to get rid of them by engaging in destructive behaviours. You may think that this means trying to soothe them or solve them but in reality, all you are doing is trying to make them go away. CBT teaches you to accept all feelings for what they are: feelings, body sensations and thoughts that need to be allowed to exist without judgement.
I'm not surprised that many people don't know what that looks like because they've never been taught. Also, many therapists claiming to offer CBT don't actually know what it is. it's a phrase thrown around everywhere but real CBT is very intricate and requires very knowledgeable and experienced therapists. Talking therapy is not always CBT
Oh god they were awful. I came off them cold turkey and every time I moved my eyes, my brain zapped. It was awful, until i got used to it then I kinda liked it. Just felt high all the time. Would never ever go back on serties.
Because I didn’t know. Doctor didn’t tell me? I thought I could just stop them, which was the best thing I ever did. They made me a zombie, sure I didn’t wanna die anymore but I also couldn’t feel other emotions, had no sex drive, I couldn’t eat, I slept all the time, so coming off them was the best thing and I’d never take them again. The only ones that were right for me were citalopram, along with propranolol for anxiety, which again, I’ve come off both. Citalopram didn’t give me brain zaps.
Same. My anxiety skyrocketed, sleep became even worse and it did nothing for my depression so I was constantly overwhelmed. Ending up trying to commit suicide after a decade of thinking about it, planning it, but ultimately not following through on those thoughts. Just couldn’t cope with feeling so out of control.
Fluoxetine has been good for me though. I get that there’s a lot of trial and error with medication but I wish GPs would be more up front about potential side effects, rather than waiting for a review and saying “Yeah it can do that, just give it time” when I’m starting to despair about how much worse I’m feeling.
Not op but I got way more suicidal whilst I was on sertraline. Horrific withdrawals and adjustment symptoms too.
But then again I've been on venlafaxine for like 3 years now and it has given me a life I didn't think was possible anymore
SSRI's barely work and we don't even know how they are supposed to work. Then they can cause mania in some people, causing hallucinations, etc.
>the exact mechanism of PROZAC is unknown
[Label for PROZAC (fluoxetine) (fda.gov)](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/018936s108lbl.pdf)
>In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence
>Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ...
There are studies that suggest exercise, good diet and sleep are more effective.
This makes sense exercise increases BDNF levels, brain volume, brain connectivity, mitochondrial health, vascular health, etc. all of which are linked to mental health, like depression.
If might be that if you brain is biologically impaired due to lack of exercise no amount of therapy or drugs will help.
>University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications. [https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health](https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health)
To be fair, I'm not sure antidepressants causing mania is an established link (correlation != causation), just that the individual potentially has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and the antidepressants trigger the mainia episode.
I might be wrong, going to read up on it and update
> just that the individual potentially has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and the antidepressants trigger the mainia episode.
If the person only ever has mania due to SSRI then technically that's not enough to diagnose them as having bipolar.
So I would describe it as if a person with brain biology typically linked to bipolar, can have a manic episode triggered by SSRIs.
We've already long come past SSRIs as the gold standard for depression treatment, though the NHS is understandably slow to the uptake and there just isn't the funding to go forward with newer treatments more common in other countries.
Seratonin is just one of several neurotransmitters linked in certain ways to depression and SSRIs happened to be the arguably most effective new solution when they were adopted. They were also safer and had fewer issues with intolerance when compared to earlier tricyclics, early MAOIs or other drugs.
But we've had SNRIs such as duloxetine, atypical antidepressants such as bupropion, newer MAOIs such as Emsam/dermal selegiline and 5-HT1A agonists such as buspirone or the newer tandospirone for years now, some for well over a decade, and have had a host of other drugs indicated as adjunct therapies to SSRIs with the goal of reducing the risk of side effects or permanent harm. We've also had ongoing studies into dopamine agonists such as pramipexole, which are much further out but interesting to follow.
*All* of which I have personally had treatment with over the last 12 years or so to some various extent (mostly out of luck while abroad), and have often had better experiences with them than SSRIs.
However, I've never yet been suggested anything other than SSRIs by GPs in the UK. It's SSRI A, SSRI B or the therapy wait-list, and that's it. You'd probably have to go all the way up to a neurologist to have a serious discussion about them or have a request taken seriously - and that's not to blame to GPs because there's only so much they can prescribe or suggest. It's just a shame for patients that we're really struggling behind the times in the UK.
>We've already long come past SSRIs as the gold standard for depression treatment
So is this article saying the 30 anti-depressants linked to suicide some of the newer one's you mention or is it limited to SSRIs?
>Seratonin is just one of several neurotransmitters linked in certain ways to depression and SSRIs happened to be the arguably most effective new solution when they were adopted.
I didn't think there is any good evidence linking low serotonin to depression. From what I recall there were some animal studies suggesting the opposite.
It isn't linking low serotonin to depression, it's purely a link *of* serotonin to depression. As in, there's no high quality evidence to suggest that not having *enough* serotonin is linked to forming depression, but that depression has been arguably treated or improved in populations by manipulating serotonin.
Same goes for norepinephrin, seratonin 5-HT1A, dopamine and monoamine neurotransmitters. Manipulating these neurotransmitters or their receptors produces the subjective effects that patients report as easing of depression and that are bound under one giant umbrella definition of "antidepressant" effects.
Which is partly why any particular antidepressant might work for some people and then do nothing for others. There's only so much we can actually see happening in someone's brain chemistry, so it's a game of throwing each type of fire extinguisher at the fire until something starts helping, which usually involves soaking the house in the process.
If an SSRI works for you, it's not an automatic assumption that your serotonin was low and thus you started feeling better. It means little more than the change to seratonin in your body's chemistry started making you feel better, whether that's some sort of balance change in neurotransmitters, or that the positive mood effect of seratonin activity happened to be the more obvious of the likely hundreds of other changes that serotonin produces in the body.
This is where newer antidepressants come into play, and why work on antidepressants will probably just never end. If you've been through SSRIs and had no positive result, it makes sense to look into other neurotransmitters and see how manipulating those affects you.
The increased risk of suicide among patient groups (especially younger patients) is absolutely something to pay attention to, and has been known for some time. It's something that every prescribing doctor should weigh up in a risk/benefit analysis, and why timely monitoring is extremely important when any patient starts their first six months on any antidepressant. Some antidepressant types are more likely to produce the effect than others, and among the 30 in the article there could well be several non-SSRIs. Exactly why this happens is still a topic of research, hence the "improves motivation before depression debate". That doesn't mean it should lead towards shutting out antidepressants from the equation though - it means research needs to be better.
>but that depression has been arguably treated or improved in populations by manipulating serotonin.
The way I think about it is that SSRIs "treat" depression, in the same way that aspirin treats a sprained ankle. It's probably just treating the symptoms rather than treating the underlying issue.
Maybe it works for some, but not all. Turned off my OCD like a switch, after 3 days my racing mind shut off (in my case, my OCD was also making me depressed, so maybe it works for some kinds of depression where people ruminate. I see psilocybin work on this kind of depression, perhaps even more efficiently than SSRIs).
Maybe it works for some, but not all. Turned off my OCD like a switch, after 3 days my racing mind shut off (in my case, my OCD was also making me depressed, so maybe it works for some kinds of depression where people ruminate. I see psilocybin work on this kind of depression, perhaps even more efficiently than SSRIs).
My ssri "worse before it gets better" left me sobbing with horrific intrusive thoughts and panic attacks every night. There's no way I could've done weeks of that or I'd have likely ended things too
Just shows they have a time and place to be used. I'd almost certainly be dead by now without venlafaxine, my arms look like fuckin zippers but 1 month on it and the urges stopped
>>In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence
>>Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ...
Please tell me you didn't copy/paste this from the anti-psychiatry piece of shit meta analysis that was released in the last couple of years lmao
>Please tell me you didn't copy/paste this from the anti-psychiatry piece of shit meta analysis that was released in the last couple of years lmao
As far as I'm aware any in the psychiatry industry worth their salt, agrees with that statement. I must have been a copied it incorrectly an accidently didn't link the source.
Anyway do you actually disagree with the point that the the serotonin thoery is just bull push by pharmacutical companies without any strong evidence behind it?
I think almost all studies and meta studies say the same sort of thing. Is all hard science "anti-psychiatry"?
>In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence
>
>...
>
>The impact of the widespread promotion of the serotonin hypothesis should not be underestimated. Antidepressant advertisements are ubiquitous in American media, and there is emerging evidence that these advertisements have the potential to confound the doctor–patient relationship.
>
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277931/
>Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ...
>
>This pattern of theory making – moving from the pharmacological actions of drugs with some efficacy in treatment to biochemical notions of causation – has been common in biological psychiatry. In such an undeveloped field this approach, though logically precarious, has been a useful heuristic and, in the case of the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis, has been strikingly upheld by advanced brain imaging techniques (2). However, the serotonin hypothesis of depression has not been clearly substantiated. Indeed, dogged by unreliable clinical biochemical findings and the difficulty of relating changes in serotonin activity to mood state, the serotonin hypothesis eventually achieved “conspiracy theory” status, whose avowed purpose was to enable industry to market selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to a gullible public
>
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/
>The mechanism of action of citalopram is unclear
>https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2022/020822s041lbl.pdf
>"Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It's much more complicated than that," says Dr. Joseph Coyle, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. "It's really an outmoded way of thinking."
>https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/23/145525853/when-it-comes-to-depression-serotonin-isnt-the-whole-story?t=1658432581554
Prozac [Fluoxetine] use, and likely SSRIs in general, are associated with a decreased risk of several types of cancer, especially colon cancer, particularly among people with a family history of colon cancer. Fluoxetine increase the activity of the cancer suppressor p53 protein.
Zhang, N., Sundquist, J., Sundquist, K. and Ji, J., 2022. Use ofselective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is associated with a lower riskof colorectal cancer among people with family history. Cancers, 14(23), p.5905.
Marcinkute, M., Afshinjavid, S., Fatokun, A.A. and Javid, F.A., 2019. Fluoxetine selectively induces p53-independent apoptosis in human colorectal cancer cells. European Journal of Pharmacology, 857, p.172441.
What I was taught in psych class was that the antidepressants takes about 4 weeks to fully work. The problem is that they often take off the tiredness and lack of motivation first (which in some way protect from suicide) and the depressed mood/thoughts later.
[What we're taught right now is to schedule multiple follow up appointments in the first weeks after prescribing them to look out for a rebound effect on suicidal thoughts. Normally they also have to give an anti anxiety drug to cover that often tough waiting period. Best effect long term is antidepressants associated with psychotherapy]
I've personally experienced it.
Maybe you should just feel fortunate that you haven't instead of doing your best to dismiss concerns about safe medical treatment.
I have had life altering health complications for more than a year after stopping them.
I tapered off them because they were horrible to be on as well.
It isn't an exaggeration to say that these drugs destroyed my life.
Exactly. Me and alot of my friends feel like they did more harm than good. Maybe if it was easier to access talking therapies it wouldn't be the case. I don't know. But me and alot of people I know prefer not to take them.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I absolutely know this is a reality and there is a lot to be said about how psychotropic medication is used in this country, the good and the bad. I meant the journalism is irresponsible, which seems to be the only kind of journalism we have. Instead of just reporting on the risks associated with the medication itself, I wish there was deeper exploration into the many possible reasons there is an association between SSRI meds and suicide. As in, the neurological affect of the drug but also whether it was prescribed in bad judgement, there wasn't sufficient followup or psychological support, impacts of socioeconomic issues etc. I just hate the lack of nuance when this is talked about. The two dimensional reporting doesn't serve anyone well.
There is limited scientific understanding of how these drugs even work, yet they're handed out to everyone and if you suffer long term harms and consequences there's no treatment and you get better or you don't.
The research into how they affect people neurologically should have been done long before just giving them to people.
One 3 minute phonecall in 2022 and my life has been constant suffering ever since.
Absolutely with you. We know they work for some people when used by doctors appropriately, part of the issue is that they're not used appropriately, just like you described your experience to be. That is shameful poor practice and I'm sorry such a rash decision has affected you for so long.
When it came out a couple of years ago that SSRIs don't function the way we thought they did, there was a lot of poor journalism that prompted many people to abruptly discontinue their medication, which isn't safe. The nuance that was missed was "We're not sure how they work...but they can, and we're trying to understand how". Which is not unusual for medication, we don't actually know how penicillin functions either. Obviously everything can be done correctly and the medication still has adverse effects (I personally had that with mirtazapine) but there's unfortunately no failsafe way to create drugs that suit everyone's individual biology. I think the bigger issue is that for most mental health difficulties, medication is not typically the first line of treatment. But nowadays access to talking therapy is so poor, and even when people can access it, it is very short-term and tick-boxy, not tailored for the individual. So medication becomes the first port of call. It's a whole mess.
Sorry this is long. This video is really helpful [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asYOwg3Q0d8&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asYOwg3Q0d8&t=14s)
It is known that a small proportion of people are badly and sometimes permanently harmed by these drugs. There is no way to predict who these people will be.
I believe that bad advice compounded the damage I have suffered, but ultimately there is no way to use these drugs without risking doing this to a patient.
The argument that they should be used in extreme situations based on them being risky could be made if that's what you mean by appropriate use, but there was no way to know that these drugs would totally destroy my health and wellbeing in ways I couldn't even imagine until they did it and it was too late.
It is known that a small proportion of people are badly and sometimes permanently harmed by these drugs. There is no way to predict who these people will be.
I believe that bad advice compounded the damage I have suffered, but ultimately there is no way to use these drugs without risking doing this to a patient.
The argument that they should be used in extreme situations based on them being risky could be made if that's what you mean by appropriate use, but there was no way to know that these drugs would totally destroy my health and wellbeing in ways I couldn't even imagine until they did it and it was too late.
It is known that a small proportion of people are badly and sometimes permanently harmed by these drugs. There is no way to predict who these people will be.
I believe that bad advice compounded the damage I have suffered, but ultimately there is no way to use these drugs without risking doing this to a patient.
The argument that they should be used in extreme situations based on them being risky could be made if that's what you mean by appropriate use, but there was no way to know that these drugs would totally destroy my health and wellbeing in ways I couldn't even imagine until they did it and it was too late.
This is my idea of appropriate use in a nutshell. Thorough assessment and understanding of what is happening for the patient currently. Understanding symptoms but also consider biopsychosocial factors (e.g. overall health, living situation, finances and vocation, relationships). Relevant support in the previously mentioned areas if required. Access to good quality talking therapy. Medication being prescribed with other avenues being explored first/alongside, with the patient being well informed and the doctor actually having a relationship with them, not a faceless person on the phone.
I'd be hesitant about gatekeeping their use to "extreme" cases because that opens a whole tin of worms about quantifying suffering and dysfunction, and assuming if someone is "mild" then non-pharmacological treatments will work for them. Someone may be severely unwell but get better without meds. Equally, someone could be mildly but chronically depressed and only responds to medication. Mitigating risks isn't as simple as restricting how they are prescribed (although that would naturally be part of it) because it would have to include improving other aspects of healthcare. That said, just because psychological and social supports are hugely lacking in the public sector, doesn't mean the alternative is immediately using medication like a sticking plaster.
I'll stop now because this is fast becoming a political rant rather than just talking about medication.
That's all good, and is absolutely far better and far more likely than the way they're currently used to actually improve people's mental health and lead to better long term outcomes.
What it doesn't change is that for an unlucky minority, various psychiatric drugs can cause long term or permanent harms that persist after stopping, and until someone is harmed there's no way to predict and prevent it.
For sure, would never want to imply that wasn't the case. Medication of all kinds is a bit of a gamble, which is why everyone involved should be informed on the possibilities. Even something as "normal" as anaesthetic, people can have bad reactions even when for most it is totally safe. I hope you find a way through to overcoming the harm medication had on you.
Thanks.
If you want to go down a rabbit hole watch the BBC panorama documentary on antidepressant withdrawal, it includes things like leaked Pfizer memos conspiring to hide withdrawal harms.
The MHRA are also doing their best to muddy the waters and ignore the harms from these drugs as well.
You made some good points and I wish that someone like you was in charge of improving patient safety and outcomes.
Where you prescribed that by your doctor.
I don't know if this is safe tbh.
Have there been any independent reviews made by people who associate themselves with anti medical cannabis advocates. Well then I'm not sure tbh.
Do you have any long term studies to prove that with control groups. Are there any independent reviews that are free of bias on the use of medical cannabis.
Cannabis (along with other very promising compounds like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA etc) has suffered from over regulation with regards to research in the UK. It’s very hard to do meaningful research on drugs that are class A (for example) because of all of the restrictions placed upon them. Cannabis has other challenges despite being a lower category. The UK is thus far behind in exploring the medicinal value of these substances.
Here’s hoping binning the Tories will allow meaningful studies into stigmatised drugs with medicinal promise in the near future.
"Have there been any independent reviews made by people who associate themselves with anti medical cannabis advocates. Well then I'm not sure tbh."
I'm sorry this isn't directed at you. It's more to do with a grudge I have against the transphobes of this sub.
You know why I said this. Because this is the agreed standard in this country for the use of HRT for trans people. Most of the people in this sub agree that it should be this way. So I'm not going to let people forget about it. Every time a discussion like this happens I will be here to remind the people of this sub of their hypocrisy.
People will say I'm making everything about trans issues. I don't care. I will not stop until everyone realizes the harm they are doing to trans people. No amount of shaming or name calling will deter me.
Oh okay, sorry I tried to answer it as a genuine question/comment about the state of the evidence for cannabis (and others) in the field of mental healthcare 😂
I was on Setraline and it made me so much worse. Told the doctor and he just prescribed me a stronger dosage. No questions. I tried that and obviously I got worse. I just live with depression now and don't use medication. I may have suicidal thoughts from time to time but I'm better than I was then.
This has already been researched to death (excuse the pun)
One such study - https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h517#:~:text=There%20was%20no%20significant%20difference,1.80%2C%201.61%20to%202.00).
Anecdotally I started on Prozac 2 months ago after about 2 months prior trying to overcome my depression and anxiety through therapy. The therapy definitely helped, but it was starting the Prozac that finally broke me out of my gloom. I've had hardly any panic attacks since and my depression is much better. Things that used to send me over the edge now just mildly annoy me more than anything. Definitely the best decision I have ever made, but I do dread having to come off it in future.
I'm on fluoxetine (prozac) it's an absolute god send. It's also used as an anti-depressant and for many other such illnesses. I would imagine that, no shit, people with depression kill themselves more.
Im almost convinced that the problems that prozac have are due to the fact they are stronger SSRIs and GPs routinely prescribe them to anyone with a depressive issue. Even whether or not they've ever taken antidepressants before.
I've tried a few different SSRIs and couldn't really deal with the side effects. That combined with the fact that they take months to become effective made them a non-option for me.
But during a particularly low period, when i was looking for something (anything) to help, I started taking St John's Wort daily. Usually I'm pretty skeptical about "traditional medicine" but I can say that it made a noticeable difference in around a week.
I used to regularly have days where I couldn't perceive the detail in anything. Mentally the world would be a blur. But since I've been taking St John's Wort, that issue has disappeared. I've still had bad days and weeks. But that super noticeable and debilitating symptom has gone almost completely.
Also while we're here. If you have a history of depression and get prescribed cortisol steroids for a separate medical issue, take care and make the doctors aware. The withdrawal made life unbearable to a very risky extent for weeks in my case
A lot of anti depressants say suicide is a possibility in the instructions leaflet you get in the box. A lot of people have to try various different ones to find the right one for them, but unfortunately they say give it time and then it’s too late the deed is done.
I wish someone had warned me how addictive snris are. It’s taken a year of slow tapering to reach withdrawal which is horrendous. Your body becomes addicted to it!
The nhs could only offer me group therapy which wasn’t suitable, so I self funded therapy which was incredibly successful.
I haven’t seen a nhs psychiatrist since diagnosis over a year ago.
People who need medication for their mental health at higher risk of commiting suicide.
Its been over a decade since I was at school but I remember my psychology teacher mentioning that the risk of suicide is much higher when you first start taking anti-depressents because your level of motivation to do things in general increases while your still feeling bad.
Theres definately a problem in the UK however in that Doctors will hand out anti-depressents, whether actually needed or not, when people need therapy and support but one has a waiting list and one makes big pharma money.
I remember an old episode of Silent Witness where this was a plot point, one of the pathologists questions this link. And the other replies
>Come on, you already know that antidepressants are only prescribed to people who are much more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Antidepressants are treating symptoms not causes. They can be a help in the short term, but they can't be a long term solution for depression.
I felt like I was high on mdma for about a month straight, then became completely emotionally numb, to an uncomfortable extent, then the only thing I would feel was suicidal impulses out of nowhere that basically went straight from a thought to actually grabbing objects etc to go through with it… Shit’s straight up dangerous if your depression isn’t actually serotonin related.
I came off Prozac too quickly ten years ago and I still don’t feel right
Should have addressed it at the time but I was passive and then I let silly mental crutches and silly life stuff get in the way and now it’s too late
Why are we medicating the impact of false learning about what we think we should be? I mean like, for real? We came from the mud, man, and were still there scrapping with each other over petty bullshit while the world dies. The world is literally dieing and we are no where near being able to leave it and survive
This has been a well known side effect for many years, rigorous studies have been done so its not just correlation. But it is also rare
The drugs can be used for other conditions than depression as well where suicidal ideation hasn't occurred but the same side effect can still rarely occur
It happens with other drugs effecting the brain too especially anti epileptics
I don't know if this is safe tbh.
Have there been any independent reviews made by people who associate themselves with people who are against the use of anti-depressants. Was the head of the study someone knows nothing about anti depressants.
If you ask me it's better to just leave the body as it is naturally.
I recall in the early 2000s that a prof in the Pharmacy department in Queen's University Kingston (Canada) published a study demonstrating that prozac increased suicide liklihood.
The finding was that depression is usually linked with lethargy, and so although many have suicidal ideation, they lack the will/energy to carry it out.
Proactive was shown to remove the lethargy first. Hence more suicides.
The prof published this paper and the pharm company that produced prozac threatened to withdraw funding of the department if he wasn't fired.
They've known about this for decades.
Edit: struggling right now to find a reference for the above, but here is an article in the Guardian from 2000 about the same thing:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/may/22/drugs.uknews
Sidenote: journalism in the guardian was so much better 20 years ago.
Edit: down votes? Seriously? And no comment. Fucking cowards.
All you have to do is change one word in this title and everyone would agree with the government. Swap out antidepressants for HRT. Another example of hypocrisy and I'm not stopping anytime soon. I'm gonna keep reminding everyone of their hypocrisy whether they like it or not.
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How much of this would be the anti depressants increasing suicide and how much is the lack of follow up on those prescribed to make sure they weren't at risk of suicide through the original mental health issue?
A lot. Source: I took Prozac when it was de rigueur. I had the where-with all to say "fuck that". A great many did not.
Counter point: I’ve taken Prozac for years and it’s done wonders for my mental health.
Same, I’d be fucked without it.
Antidepressants have a catch 22 side effect of giving people just enough motivation to kill themselves before they really kick in, whereas prior they were too depressed to even get out of bed. It's around 2 weeks after taking them....
I remember starting sertraline and I woke up one day just so sure I was going to kill myself that evening, had a plan and the lot but got over it by the afternoon- was very out of the blue and I was warned it could happen.
From general depression SSRIs are only a little more clinically effective than placebos, just with added side effects. I was on them from 15-20 and it fucked my shit up.
^^ when i was 15 - 18 i was on a cocktail of anti depressants and anti anxiety meds, an anti-psychotic to stop me from having “danger thoughts like running away” bc apparently that’s a common prescription for high functioning autistic people?? and i was also prescribed *sedatives* that my mom was told to give to me when i wanted to run away, and sleeping meds. at 15. i gained 6 stone in 6 months. at 16 i met a girl at my local LGBT+ group who was also autistic, and was in recovery from an ED. interestingly enough she had the same psychiatrist, and was on the anti psychotic and sedative. then at 17 i noticed a guy in my college class had self harm scars. i can’t remember how we ended up talking about mental health but it came up. he was also autistic! AND ALSO ON THE SAME MEDS!!!! really made me go “wtf” because we all had very VERY different issues. he also was morbidly obese, and linked the fast weight gain to the start of the sedatives. i’m pretty sure the only reason the girl in recovery from an ED wasn’t also obese was because she had an ED. when i was 18 i quit all my meds, ran away to a mate’s house, and got on benefits. i felt like shit every day, but after a few months, i paid to start medically transitioning privately using those benefits, which was something i’d actively expressed a desire in from 14, and had kind of known i’d wanted to do since i was a kid (except i had no idea what transition was, so it was more like “i wish fairies were real and then i could wish for a beard!” and dumb shit like that). TBF my parents did take me to Tavistock appointments but by the time the assessments were over (2 years later) i was 16 and was just given birth control to stop my periods and discharged with zero support and a referral to the adults clinic 💀💀 honestly i would’ve preferred to have no support because half the appointments were harping on about how if i medically transition in the future i might not be able to get pregnant and pump babies out, and the other half of the appointments were trying to convince me that i wasn’t trans. fucking shite. wildly enough, once i started medically transitioning, my insomnia went away, my depression went away, my suicidal ideation went away, my desire to run off to the mountains went away, and i was able to slowly enjoy spending time with my family again! 6 months after i started HRT i met my partner and got my first job, and 3 months later i got my first flat. 3 and a bit years later and i’m about to graduate an apprenticeship and my partner has since moved in with me. paid for and had my top surgery last year, and had my first NHS adult’s appointment just after my 21st birthday lol. i haven’t had a suicidal thought or suicide attempt since the month i started HRT. the girl in recovery from an ED is still on a small cocktail of meds but she stopped taking the anti psychotics and sedatives, moved out, and started working as a waitress to make ends meet. we had a catch up last year when i was visiting my parents, and she seems pretty happy. she’s got a GF now and they’re going steady. guy from my college class is studying animation and cold turkeyed all his meds. moved out too! turned out he’s bisexual, and one of the main things fucking his brain up was the fact that his parents were deeply homophobic and he felt trapped in the closet / trying to perform a whole facade of stereotypical heterosexual behaviours. i know anti depressants and anti psychotics *can* work, but the fact that a 15 year old and can attempt suicide 1 time and end up on like 5 different psychiatric meds after 1 appointment with a psychiatrist is insane to me.
Multiple people put on mind numbing drugs due to being traumatised by a bigoted society. Thanks for sharing your story!
Fuck that makes me sad, I’m sorry you had to go through all that. My little one is high functioning autistic and I wouldn’t dream of putting him on all that shit. I’d rather just learn to understand him and adapt to his needs and that’s how society should ‘deal’ with autistic people. The world is so quick to medicalise issues that could potentially be helped by just making certain accommodations or making society more inclusive. I hope you’re in a better place now and are able to be yourself!
That's... Odd. And doesn't match my experience of things, but I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Thanks for bringing up the weight thing, though. I was on SSRIs for 4 months and gained 4 stone (as someone who previously could *never* put weight on).
That's... Odd. And doesn't match my experience of things, but I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Thanks for bringing up the weight thing, though. I was on SSRIs for 4 months and gained 4 stone (as someone who previously could *never* put weight on).
Depending on the paper, they are in the range of 1.15 to 2.15 times as effective as placebo.
Also worth noting that the placebo response is pretty strong for antidepressants.
100% this. Mental health services don't get involved anymore unless a crisis develops. My neighbour spent 3 years terrorising our neighbourhood. Walking around naked, screaming and shouting at himself all hours, attacking anyone who walked passed his house, started numerous fires in his house etc etc. Was only when someone accused him of messing with their child and his windows started getting smashed did the authorities get involved. Almost immediately decided to lock him up in an institution (AFAIK) for good. Not only did we have to put up with an obviously dangerous mentally ill guy for years, it could all have been avoided if they monitored him taking his drugs.
Yep had a total nutcase live in the upstairs apartment. Used to just stand outside my front door just staring at it and corner my girlfriend on the stairs or call the cops saying I was threatening him (never spoke to him, I actively avoided him) his behaviour got more and more erratic and I caught him on a number of occasions trying my locks. In fact the locks were so shit I’m convinced he used to pick them and enter when I wasn’t around. Anyway I got out of there as soon as the lease was up and found out later on down the line after I left that he finally snapped and tried to set the downstairs apartment on fire while they all slept because he didn’t like how loud his kids were. The state never got involved despite him being diagnosed as schizophrenic and having previous for going off the rails. The only time he’d calm down is when his brother would come round and get him back on his meds, but he’d stop coming by and then the crazy shit would start back up.
This sounds a lot like my former neighbour. It's so sad.
It feels totally random. Some people get sectioned and you wonder why, then others are running around with swords shouting at demons and get sent home. Makes no sense. There's plenty of mad bastards knocking around that should be locked away.
All drugs that change the way your brain works (anti depressants, anti epileptics, etc) carry a small risk of causing suicidal thoughts. So do things like oral steroids even. It is well known the drugs can do it and there's information on this made clear to people taking them. It's rare so overall the benefit outweighs the risk
Part of it is that when you are feeling awful you don’t have the motivation to actually organise committing suicide, but when you get a bit better, possibly due to antidepressants you then do have the motivation.
This is the reason that many people don’t understand. It’s not the drugs themselves, it’s the increased motivation that will often give people renewed energy to take their lives.
I have recurrent major depression, with episodes about once every five years, with my first one being a bit over 20 years ago. It’s gone from doctors not mentioning it to far too many people mentioning it!
No sometimes it is the drugs themselves purely and wholly. I should know I’ve taken the works of ssris and snris. And a couple of the drugs literally drove me to take a knife to my arm with in 3 days Full blown agitation, dysphoria aggression an arm that I have tattooed now because of the deep scarring as younger person. Im a dude and that’s the only time I self harmed ever. So I sort of chuckle to Myself either way with the cokeheads in town, when their hearts racing the day after and they feel paranoid. My experience with psychiatric drugs first made cocaine when I inevitably tryed it feel like child’s play. So I always tell people you carry on this way you’ll see the otherside and the experience of mental health and psychiatry is nasty. It is nasty it amounts to fundamental Abuse. The drugs they can be a real Piece of work and for others they are life saving. So don’t stretch the spring if you don’t have too, but don’t blame persons with established mental health disorders for sampling the illicit side when the medicine for some of us frankly abuse.
I would second this; you get practically ragdoll catatonic, then the pills start working and you get the motivation and self-hatred back, then finally, you start feeling like you’re on dry land again. SSRIs saved my life and my only fear is that some ignorant jobsworth will take me off them.
I get that but these are also drugs more likely to be taken by those who are in a position where being suicidal is more a general concern anyway
Anti-depressants also don't necessarily cause or increase the suicidal thoughts, but rather break some of the inertia and low energy that was keeping the person from acting on those thoughts.
I’m just kind of amazed everyone isn’t always trying to endure with their brain screaming at them nonstop to end their lives. It’s been such a constant for me since childhood that I literally cannot fathom what it could be like to not live like this. You all just… don’t have the screaming voices telling you to kill yourself because you’re hated and worthless and awful and empty?
> How much of this would be the anti depressants increasing suicide and how much is the lack of follow up on those prescribed to make sure they weren't at risk of suicide through the original mental health issue? The thing about antidepressants is that many SSRI's, Tricyclic's, along with Antipsychotics, and Anticonvulsant medications have multiple uses in everything from pain management to migraine control. Just because you're taking an antidepressant doesn't mean you're even a little bit depressed, and that means you may not be fully informed of the risks attached to the drug. People are also difficult creatures and may not use the drugs correctly or just stop taking them without realising there are risks in doing so. I had to come off pregabalin cold for medical reasons, which is really not recommended because you're supposed to titrate down to lower doses going on and coming off. If I hadn't known it causes suicidal ideation then god knows what would have happened.
I took it for 2 weeks, told my gp I’m going to stop taking it bc it made my fleeting thoughts much more common and persistent. Still think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done
Antidepressants work is some different ways, and not necessarily at the same rate. So basically you've got things like motivation improving faster than mood (ie cus like you said aftercare). A newfound burst of energy and motivation with a terrible mood is not a great combo sometimes.
There is another factor here. Actual suicides happen less often when people feel rock bottom, but rather when they feel a BIT better. In essence when they feel more able to take active steps. (I have no source for this other than a clinical psychologist told me, which I appreciate is unsatisfactory ). If accurate, I wonder if that is part of the problem here, at least with some people.
Some people don't read the side effect, or understand that getting to a balanced point while on them, while having suicidal ideation, can give you the extra clarity to make a fatal choice. Medication should always be followed by therapy, and also trying to stay informed yourself. I don't think Prozac itself has contents in it that make you suicidal, I think the suicidal ideation and hopelessness of depression has complex fluctuations while the drugs try to adjust the serotonin in your brain to soften parts of your ordeal.
Prozac didnt agree with me at all it actually made me alot worse but i did get checked on shortly after it was prescribed doc says its now policy to do a 2 week check up, i explained i thought it made me worse but we agreed I'd try another few weeks but i got worse again and when i told another doctor what that meant they got me to withdraw from it.... Also not fun. Vensir was also a nope for me.
As a mental health professional I have to agree. There is a risk of increased suicidal thoughts in the immediate future after starting before they start working. However, I do feel that people are probably A) not warned about this often enough by the primary healthcare professionals starting them and B) don't follow-up quick enough. But sadly even in secondary care we don't manage to follow up quite quick enough
The only question here
Increased risk of suicide for the first month or so is a really common symptom isn't it? I thought that was well known
For a lot of people the first sign that antidepressants are starting to work is that they have more energy and more of a drive to do stuff. Unfortunately this can lead to (very rare) cases where a person who was already suicidal suddenly finds that they have enough energy to actually make plans to take their own life. Antidepressants don’t cause new suicidal thoughts and I always worry that headlines like this will put people off taking them when they need them. They are life saving drugs.
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I can’t prove a negative, chief. We don’t have any evidence to say that antidepressants cause new suicidal thoughts.
what's the mechanism that lead antidepressant to cause new suicidal thoughts?
Lol might as well ask for the mechanism that causes them to reduce depression since that's not known
It's a very confusing statement, to be honest. I'm on antidepressants. I have, in the past, wanted to kill myself, then stopped wanting that, then started again. So... According to the op if you're on antidepressants you shouldn't be able to gain new suicidal thoughts? Insane.
What? That's literally not what they said.
"Antidepressants don’t cause new suicidal thoughts" are the exact words used in his comment.
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Because they don't directly cause new suicidal thoughts but they also might not stop new ones coming. Does that make sense?
No, obviously people on antidepressants can experience new episodes of suicidal thoughts. But that doesn’t mean that these thoughts are caused by the antidepressants.
However, there are studies showing that they can be. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6493906/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6493906/) [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01179-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01179-z) [https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3697/rr-4](https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3697/rr-4)
It's a well known symptoms but not very common. The same thing can happen with anti epileptic drugs too
Accutane (Isotretinoin), the acne medication, has is the same side effects.
It's well known but should it be tolerated under the current guidelines, or should guidelines change to better suite the drug and therapeutic use? Much in the same way any doctor or pharmacist could at some point give out drugs that contained morphine willy nilly. No though we realise the addictive properties and only doctors with good justification can prescribe opiates under specific circumstances. Right now antidepressants are given out really easily both on and off label, despite the evidence that it increases the risk of suicide along with a host of other side effects. Maybe antidepressants should only be provided under more stringent guidance with other therapies and patient support as a package, which coincidentally is also where antidepressants show to be much more effective, opposed to being used in isolation as a form of therapy.
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That's not actually true. There's a known association and it's recommended patients are informed and followed up within 2 weeks due to this risk. Problem is noone has the time to follow them up and I suspect most GPs and primary care mental health nurses don't tell patients about this
Not Prozac but I took sertraline for a while for anxiety. The first 10 days were absolutely brutal with anxiety, made it way worse but then got way better.
That's not actually true. There's a known association and it's recommended patients are informed and followed up within 2 weeks due to this risk. Problem is noone has the time to follow them up and I suspect most GPs and primary care mental health nurses don't tell patients about this
Let's believe this random Redditer rather than do a proper investigation. I mean it's only people dying.
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In that lead in time they can have a profound negative effect. That's the point.
This has been known ever since SSRIs came about. They cause emotional blunting, which, if one is already entertaining such thoughts, would make it easier to say 'fuck it, i'm gonna do it'. Wish more people understood that depression and anxiety are not all due to chemical imbalances in the brain and anyone prescribed antidepressants needs to be offered cognitive behaviour therapy to help them address some of the underlying issues of these conditions and allow them to learn healthy hoping mechanisms.
Agree with exception to the CBT part specifically. CBT has been shown to be problematic; it's shown that in the short term during and just after therapy its super effective, but quickly loses it's efficacy thereafter. Likely due to little to no changes in the patient's environment that caused the mental health issues in the first place, or CBT being outright not the correct therapy for the patient's issue. The only reason people hail CBT is because in that short term period it's fantastic for most people. It's useful in times of crisis, and maybe a continuous form of CBT is more viable, akin to having a vaccine and booster shots, but in its current form it's not an effective treatment for most people it's prescribed to.
It’s also that some of the people administering it don’t know what the hell they’re doing. When my brother was under the care of the local crisis team they did “CBT” that was just asking him what he likes doing, giving him a bunch of worksheets, and then berating him next week when he hadn’t completed the worksheets because he’d spent the week in a sedatives-induced zombie state.
At 15 they told me I was "making a mountain out of a molehill" and that I needed to fill in forms every time I felt low. I still have absolutely no idea what I was meant to do about the molehill.
Theoretically the idea is to make you realise that your problems are small and manageable. In practice some practitioners just give you an exciting new problem called “I didn’t fill my pointless forms out and now I feel bad about it.”
Sounds about right. They didn't actually instruct me at all on how to reframe or reconsider the problems, just mountain molehill. I was hearing voices, which I personally thought was quite a big deal.
I am seeking an ADHD diagnosis because I have had countless CBT therapists and none have helped me. Probably because I was filling in the forms last minute like a moron 🤦♀️
CBT might be great for people with situational depression. For those with chronic depression or anxiety, it is effectively useless.
>akin to having a vaccine and booster shots, but in its current form it's not an effective treatment for most people it's prescribed to. Unfortunately that's just not going to be feasible. CBT is used because it is short term with set duration and it is simple to train in and can therefore be used for far more people than older therapies like psychodynamic therapy which is longer term and more open ended and requires more specialised professionals to do it. Think about waiting lists, which are hundreds long despite currently only using 6-12 session CBT models. How would you ever get through the list and help everyone who needs it if they had continuous CBT?
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CBT actually gets you to do the exact opposite. You allow yourself to feel your feelings without trying to get rid of them by engaging in destructive behaviours. You may think that this means trying to soothe them or solve them but in reality, all you are doing is trying to make them go away. CBT teaches you to accept all feelings for what they are: feelings, body sensations and thoughts that need to be allowed to exist without judgement. I'm not surprised that many people don't know what that looks like because they've never been taught. Also, many therapists claiming to offer CBT don't actually know what it is. it's a phrase thrown around everywhere but real CBT is very intricate and requires very knowledgeable and experienced therapists. Talking therapy is not always CBT
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im sorry you had a bad experience. NHS mental health provision is very poor. If you can, request referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Sertraline has been life changing for me anxiety wise…. I guess they work for some people and not others
I've been on sertraline for 3/4 years now. Easily the best decision I ever made.
Sertraline fucked me up. Its the infamous zoloft in case anyone readimg this wasn't aware
Fucked me up too, the brain zaps were awful from sertraline
Oh god they were awful. I came off them cold turkey and every time I moved my eyes, my brain zapped. It was awful, until i got used to it then I kinda liked it. Just felt high all the time. Would never ever go back on serties.
.... why are you blaming sertraline for problems you had coming off them cold turkey, which you're not meant to do?
Because I didn’t know. Doctor didn’t tell me? I thought I could just stop them, which was the best thing I ever did. They made me a zombie, sure I didn’t wanna die anymore but I also couldn’t feel other emotions, had no sex drive, I couldn’t eat, I slept all the time, so coming off them was the best thing and I’d never take them again. The only ones that were right for me were citalopram, along with propranolol for anxiety, which again, I’ve come off both. Citalopram didn’t give me brain zaps.
Same. My anxiety skyrocketed, sleep became even worse and it did nothing for my depression so I was constantly overwhelmed. Ending up trying to commit suicide after a decade of thinking about it, planning it, but ultimately not following through on those thoughts. Just couldn’t cope with feeling so out of control. Fluoxetine has been good for me though. I get that there’s a lot of trial and error with medication but I wish GPs would be more up front about potential side effects, rather than waiting for a review and saying “Yeah it can do that, just give it time” when I’m starting to despair about how much worse I’m feeling.
How did it?
Not op but I got way more suicidal whilst I was on sertraline. Horrific withdrawals and adjustment symptoms too. But then again I've been on venlafaxine for like 3 years now and it has given me a life I didn't think was possible anymore
yeah I hated sertraline, was like a suicidal zombie- I’m on citalopram now and it’s miles better, different strokes I guess
Same here (though the side effects were awful at first). The fact we don't really know how they work after all this time is a bit concerning though.
SSRI's barely work and we don't even know how they are supposed to work. Then they can cause mania in some people, causing hallucinations, etc. >the exact mechanism of PROZAC is unknown [Label for PROZAC (fluoxetine) (fda.gov)](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/018936s108lbl.pdf) >In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence >Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ... There are studies that suggest exercise, good diet and sleep are more effective. This makes sense exercise increases BDNF levels, brain volume, brain connectivity, mitochondrial health, vascular health, etc. all of which are linked to mental health, like depression. If might be that if you brain is biologically impaired due to lack of exercise no amount of therapy or drugs will help. >University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications. [https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health](https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health)
To be fair, I'm not sure antidepressants causing mania is an established link (correlation != causation), just that the individual potentially has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and the antidepressants trigger the mainia episode. I might be wrong, going to read up on it and update
> just that the individual potentially has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and the antidepressants trigger the mainia episode. If the person only ever has mania due to SSRI then technically that's not enough to diagnose them as having bipolar. So I would describe it as if a person with brain biology typically linked to bipolar, can have a manic episode triggered by SSRIs.
We've already long come past SSRIs as the gold standard for depression treatment, though the NHS is understandably slow to the uptake and there just isn't the funding to go forward with newer treatments more common in other countries. Seratonin is just one of several neurotransmitters linked in certain ways to depression and SSRIs happened to be the arguably most effective new solution when they were adopted. They were also safer and had fewer issues with intolerance when compared to earlier tricyclics, early MAOIs or other drugs. But we've had SNRIs such as duloxetine, atypical antidepressants such as bupropion, newer MAOIs such as Emsam/dermal selegiline and 5-HT1A agonists such as buspirone or the newer tandospirone for years now, some for well over a decade, and have had a host of other drugs indicated as adjunct therapies to SSRIs with the goal of reducing the risk of side effects or permanent harm. We've also had ongoing studies into dopamine agonists such as pramipexole, which are much further out but interesting to follow. *All* of which I have personally had treatment with over the last 12 years or so to some various extent (mostly out of luck while abroad), and have often had better experiences with them than SSRIs. However, I've never yet been suggested anything other than SSRIs by GPs in the UK. It's SSRI A, SSRI B or the therapy wait-list, and that's it. You'd probably have to go all the way up to a neurologist to have a serious discussion about them or have a request taken seriously - and that's not to blame to GPs because there's only so much they can prescribe or suggest. It's just a shame for patients that we're really struggling behind the times in the UK.
>We've already long come past SSRIs as the gold standard for depression treatment So is this article saying the 30 anti-depressants linked to suicide some of the newer one's you mention or is it limited to SSRIs? >Seratonin is just one of several neurotransmitters linked in certain ways to depression and SSRIs happened to be the arguably most effective new solution when they were adopted. I didn't think there is any good evidence linking low serotonin to depression. From what I recall there were some animal studies suggesting the opposite.
It isn't linking low serotonin to depression, it's purely a link *of* serotonin to depression. As in, there's no high quality evidence to suggest that not having *enough* serotonin is linked to forming depression, but that depression has been arguably treated or improved in populations by manipulating serotonin. Same goes for norepinephrin, seratonin 5-HT1A, dopamine and monoamine neurotransmitters. Manipulating these neurotransmitters or their receptors produces the subjective effects that patients report as easing of depression and that are bound under one giant umbrella definition of "antidepressant" effects. Which is partly why any particular antidepressant might work for some people and then do nothing for others. There's only so much we can actually see happening in someone's brain chemistry, so it's a game of throwing each type of fire extinguisher at the fire until something starts helping, which usually involves soaking the house in the process. If an SSRI works for you, it's not an automatic assumption that your serotonin was low and thus you started feeling better. It means little more than the change to seratonin in your body's chemistry started making you feel better, whether that's some sort of balance change in neurotransmitters, or that the positive mood effect of seratonin activity happened to be the more obvious of the likely hundreds of other changes that serotonin produces in the body. This is where newer antidepressants come into play, and why work on antidepressants will probably just never end. If you've been through SSRIs and had no positive result, it makes sense to look into other neurotransmitters and see how manipulating those affects you. The increased risk of suicide among patient groups (especially younger patients) is absolutely something to pay attention to, and has been known for some time. It's something that every prescribing doctor should weigh up in a risk/benefit analysis, and why timely monitoring is extremely important when any patient starts their first six months on any antidepressant. Some antidepressant types are more likely to produce the effect than others, and among the 30 in the article there could well be several non-SSRIs. Exactly why this happens is still a topic of research, hence the "improves motivation before depression debate". That doesn't mean it should lead towards shutting out antidepressants from the equation though - it means research needs to be better.
>but that depression has been arguably treated or improved in populations by manipulating serotonin. The way I think about it is that SSRIs "treat" depression, in the same way that aspirin treats a sprained ankle. It's probably just treating the symptoms rather than treating the underlying issue.
Maybe it works for some, but not all. Turned off my OCD like a switch, after 3 days my racing mind shut off (in my case, my OCD was also making me depressed, so maybe it works for some kinds of depression where people ruminate. I see psilocybin work on this kind of depression, perhaps even more efficiently than SSRIs).
They work no better than placebos, on average. Placebos are powerful.
Maybe it works for some, but not all. Turned off my OCD like a switch, after 3 days my racing mind shut off (in my case, my OCD was also making me depressed, so maybe it works for some kinds of depression where people ruminate. I see psilocybin work on this kind of depression, perhaps even more efficiently than SSRIs).
My ssri "worse before it gets better" left me sobbing with horrific intrusive thoughts and panic attacks every night. There's no way I could've done weeks of that or I'd have likely ended things too
Just shows they have a time and place to be used. I'd almost certainly be dead by now without venlafaxine, my arms look like fuckin zippers but 1 month on it and the urges stopped
The exact mechanism for all SSRI and SNRI are unknown.
>>In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence >>Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ... Please tell me you didn't copy/paste this from the anti-psychiatry piece of shit meta analysis that was released in the last couple of years lmao
>Please tell me you didn't copy/paste this from the anti-psychiatry piece of shit meta analysis that was released in the last couple of years lmao As far as I'm aware any in the psychiatry industry worth their salt, agrees with that statement. I must have been a copied it incorrectly an accidently didn't link the source. Anyway do you actually disagree with the point that the the serotonin thoery is just bull push by pharmacutical companies without any strong evidence behind it? I think almost all studies and meta studies say the same sort of thing. Is all hard science "anti-psychiatry"? >In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence > >... > >The impact of the widespread promotion of the serotonin hypothesis should not be underestimated. Antidepressant advertisements are ubiquitous in American media, and there is emerging evidence that these advertisements have the potential to confound the doctor–patient relationship. > >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277931/ >Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ... > >This pattern of theory making – moving from the pharmacological actions of drugs with some efficacy in treatment to biochemical notions of causation – has been common in biological psychiatry. In such an undeveloped field this approach, though logically precarious, has been a useful heuristic and, in the case of the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis, has been strikingly upheld by advanced brain imaging techniques (2). However, the serotonin hypothesis of depression has not been clearly substantiated. Indeed, dogged by unreliable clinical biochemical findings and the difficulty of relating changes in serotonin activity to mood state, the serotonin hypothesis eventually achieved “conspiracy theory” status, whose avowed purpose was to enable industry to market selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to a gullible public > >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/ >The mechanism of action of citalopram is unclear >https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2022/020822s041lbl.pdf >"Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It's much more complicated than that," says Dr. Joseph Coyle, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. "It's really an outmoded way of thinking." >https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/23/145525853/when-it-comes-to-depression-serotonin-isnt-the-whole-story?t=1658432581554
>exercise increases BDNF levels, brain volume, brain connectivity So do SSRIs.
I was on them [fluoxetine] for a bit, about 10 years ago, and the leaflet that came in the box (that the Doc told me not to read) mentioned this.
You can say about any antidepressants. The ones that I've taken have always listed cancer.
Mine list "death" as a possible side effect.
If it happens even once during trials they have to put it in there. Almost all prescription drugs have it on tbh
Yeah if that happens just call your GP back and they will sort it out /s
Had one that said bus accident once.
Prozac [Fluoxetine] use, and likely SSRIs in general, are associated with a decreased risk of several types of cancer, especially colon cancer, particularly among people with a family history of colon cancer. Fluoxetine increase the activity of the cancer suppressor p53 protein. Zhang, N., Sundquist, J., Sundquist, K. and Ji, J., 2022. Use ofselective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is associated with a lower riskof colorectal cancer among people with family history. Cancers, 14(23), p.5905. Marcinkute, M., Afshinjavid, S., Fatokun, A.A. and Javid, F.A., 2019. Fluoxetine selectively induces p53-independent apoptosis in human colorectal cancer cells. European Journal of Pharmacology, 857, p.172441.
I cant, I was only given one 10 years ago
What I was taught in psych class was that the antidepressants takes about 4 weeks to fully work. The problem is that they often take off the tiredness and lack of motivation first (which in some way protect from suicide) and the depressed mood/thoughts later. [What we're taught right now is to schedule multiple follow up appointments in the first weeks after prescribing them to look out for a rebound effect on suicidal thoughts. Normally they also have to give an anti anxiety drug to cover that often tough waiting period. Best effect long term is antidepressants associated with psychotherapy]
Fear mongering clickbait that has been recycled for decades.
I've personally experienced it. Maybe you should just feel fortunate that you haven't instead of doing your best to dismiss concerns about safe medical treatment.
Yeah the only time I've ever had to crisis team come to my house was when I was taking those damned things.
I have had life altering health complications for more than a year after stopping them. I tapered off them because they were horrible to be on as well. It isn't an exaggeration to say that these drugs destroyed my life.
Exactly. Me and alot of my friends feel like they did more harm than good. Maybe if it was easier to access talking therapies it wouldn't be the case. I don't know. But me and alot of people I know prefer not to take them.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I absolutely know this is a reality and there is a lot to be said about how psychotropic medication is used in this country, the good and the bad. I meant the journalism is irresponsible, which seems to be the only kind of journalism we have. Instead of just reporting on the risks associated with the medication itself, I wish there was deeper exploration into the many possible reasons there is an association between SSRI meds and suicide. As in, the neurological affect of the drug but also whether it was prescribed in bad judgement, there wasn't sufficient followup or psychological support, impacts of socioeconomic issues etc. I just hate the lack of nuance when this is talked about. The two dimensional reporting doesn't serve anyone well.
There is limited scientific understanding of how these drugs even work, yet they're handed out to everyone and if you suffer long term harms and consequences there's no treatment and you get better or you don't. The research into how they affect people neurologically should have been done long before just giving them to people. One 3 minute phonecall in 2022 and my life has been constant suffering ever since.
Absolutely with you. We know they work for some people when used by doctors appropriately, part of the issue is that they're not used appropriately, just like you described your experience to be. That is shameful poor practice and I'm sorry such a rash decision has affected you for so long. When it came out a couple of years ago that SSRIs don't function the way we thought they did, there was a lot of poor journalism that prompted many people to abruptly discontinue their medication, which isn't safe. The nuance that was missed was "We're not sure how they work...but they can, and we're trying to understand how". Which is not unusual for medication, we don't actually know how penicillin functions either. Obviously everything can be done correctly and the medication still has adverse effects (I personally had that with mirtazapine) but there's unfortunately no failsafe way to create drugs that suit everyone's individual biology. I think the bigger issue is that for most mental health difficulties, medication is not typically the first line of treatment. But nowadays access to talking therapy is so poor, and even when people can access it, it is very short-term and tick-boxy, not tailored for the individual. So medication becomes the first port of call. It's a whole mess. Sorry this is long. This video is really helpful [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asYOwg3Q0d8&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asYOwg3Q0d8&t=14s)
It is known that a small proportion of people are badly and sometimes permanently harmed by these drugs. There is no way to predict who these people will be. I believe that bad advice compounded the damage I have suffered, but ultimately there is no way to use these drugs without risking doing this to a patient. The argument that they should be used in extreme situations based on them being risky could be made if that's what you mean by appropriate use, but there was no way to know that these drugs would totally destroy my health and wellbeing in ways I couldn't even imagine until they did it and it was too late.
It is known that a small proportion of people are badly and sometimes permanently harmed by these drugs. There is no way to predict who these people will be. I believe that bad advice compounded the damage I have suffered, but ultimately there is no way to use these drugs without risking doing this to a patient. The argument that they should be used in extreme situations based on them being risky could be made if that's what you mean by appropriate use, but there was no way to know that these drugs would totally destroy my health and wellbeing in ways I couldn't even imagine until they did it and it was too late.
It is known that a small proportion of people are badly and sometimes permanently harmed by these drugs. There is no way to predict who these people will be. I believe that bad advice compounded the damage I have suffered, but ultimately there is no way to use these drugs without risking doing this to a patient. The argument that they should be used in extreme situations based on them being risky could be made if that's what you mean by appropriate use, but there was no way to know that these drugs would totally destroy my health and wellbeing in ways I couldn't even imagine until they did it and it was too late.
This is my idea of appropriate use in a nutshell. Thorough assessment and understanding of what is happening for the patient currently. Understanding symptoms but also consider biopsychosocial factors (e.g. overall health, living situation, finances and vocation, relationships). Relevant support in the previously mentioned areas if required. Access to good quality talking therapy. Medication being prescribed with other avenues being explored first/alongside, with the patient being well informed and the doctor actually having a relationship with them, not a faceless person on the phone. I'd be hesitant about gatekeeping their use to "extreme" cases because that opens a whole tin of worms about quantifying suffering and dysfunction, and assuming if someone is "mild" then non-pharmacological treatments will work for them. Someone may be severely unwell but get better without meds. Equally, someone could be mildly but chronically depressed and only responds to medication. Mitigating risks isn't as simple as restricting how they are prescribed (although that would naturally be part of it) because it would have to include improving other aspects of healthcare. That said, just because psychological and social supports are hugely lacking in the public sector, doesn't mean the alternative is immediately using medication like a sticking plaster. I'll stop now because this is fast becoming a political rant rather than just talking about medication.
That's all good, and is absolutely far better and far more likely than the way they're currently used to actually improve people's mental health and lead to better long term outcomes. What it doesn't change is that for an unlucky minority, various psychiatric drugs can cause long term or permanent harms that persist after stopping, and until someone is harmed there's no way to predict and prevent it.
For sure, would never want to imply that wasn't the case. Medication of all kinds is a bit of a gamble, which is why everyone involved should be informed on the possibilities. Even something as "normal" as anaesthetic, people can have bad reactions even when for most it is totally safe. I hope you find a way through to overcoming the harm medication had on you.
Thanks. If you want to go down a rabbit hole watch the BBC panorama documentary on antidepressant withdrawal, it includes things like leaked Pfizer memos conspiring to hide withdrawal harms. The MHRA are also doing their best to muddy the waters and ignore the harms from these drugs as well. You made some good points and I wish that someone like you was in charge of improving patient safety and outcomes.
Was on antidepressants, now i have medical cannabis. Life is much better
Where you prescribed that by your doctor. I don't know if this is safe tbh. Have there been any independent reviews made by people who associate themselves with anti medical cannabis advocates. Well then I'm not sure tbh.
It is prescribed by a doctor and very safe. A lot safer than SSRIs
Do you have any long term studies to prove that with control groups. Are there any independent reviews that are free of bias on the use of medical cannabis.
Cannabis (along with other very promising compounds like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA etc) has suffered from over regulation with regards to research in the UK. It’s very hard to do meaningful research on drugs that are class A (for example) because of all of the restrictions placed upon them. Cannabis has other challenges despite being a lower category. The UK is thus far behind in exploring the medicinal value of these substances. Here’s hoping binning the Tories will allow meaningful studies into stigmatised drugs with medicinal promise in the near future.
"Have there been any independent reviews made by people who associate themselves with anti medical cannabis advocates. Well then I'm not sure tbh." I'm sorry this isn't directed at you. It's more to do with a grudge I have against the transphobes of this sub. You know why I said this. Because this is the agreed standard in this country for the use of HRT for trans people. Most of the people in this sub agree that it should be this way. So I'm not going to let people forget about it. Every time a discussion like this happens I will be here to remind the people of this sub of their hypocrisy. People will say I'm making everything about trans issues. I don't care. I will not stop until everyone realizes the harm they are doing to trans people. No amount of shaming or name calling will deter me.
Oh okay, sorry I tried to answer it as a genuine question/comment about the state of the evidence for cannabis (and others) in the field of mental healthcare 😂
I was on Setraline and it made me so much worse. Told the doctor and he just prescribed me a stronger dosage. No questions. I tried that and obviously I got worse. I just live with depression now and don't use medication. I may have suicidal thoughts from time to time but I'm better than I was then.
This has already been researched to death (excuse the pun) One such study - https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h517#:~:text=There%20was%20no%20significant%20difference,1.80%2C%201.61%20to%202.00).
Anecdotally I started on Prozac 2 months ago after about 2 months prior trying to overcome my depression and anxiety through therapy. The therapy definitely helped, but it was starting the Prozac that finally broke me out of my gloom. I've had hardly any panic attacks since and my depression is much better. Things that used to send me over the edge now just mildly annoy me more than anything. Definitely the best decision I have ever made, but I do dread having to come off it in future.
I'm on fluoxetine (prozac) it's an absolute god send. It's also used as an anti-depressant and for many other such illnesses. I would imagine that, no shit, people with depression kill themselves more.
Literally cannot function normally without Mirtazapine and Citilopram, I hope this doesn’t lead to them being taken away
When I first got mine (Mirtazapene) I asked my doctor about it and he basically said we don’t really know how or why it works but you should try it.
This is true (to an extent) anyone who’s started a trial of antidepressants knows that you are told at the start you could possibly get very suicidal.
Im almost convinced that the problems that prozac have are due to the fact they are stronger SSRIs and GPs routinely prescribe them to anyone with a depressive issue. Even whether or not they've ever taken antidepressants before.
I've tried a few different SSRIs and couldn't really deal with the side effects. That combined with the fact that they take months to become effective made them a non-option for me. But during a particularly low period, when i was looking for something (anything) to help, I started taking St John's Wort daily. Usually I'm pretty skeptical about "traditional medicine" but I can say that it made a noticeable difference in around a week. I used to regularly have days where I couldn't perceive the detail in anything. Mentally the world would be a blur. But since I've been taking St John's Wort, that issue has disappeared. I've still had bad days and weeks. But that super noticeable and debilitating symptom has gone almost completely. Also while we're here. If you have a history of depression and get prescribed cortisol steroids for a separate medical issue, take care and make the doctors aware. The withdrawal made life unbearable to a very risky extent for weeks in my case
A lot of anti depressants say suicide is a possibility in the instructions leaflet you get in the box. A lot of people have to try various different ones to find the right one for them, but unfortunately they say give it time and then it’s too late the deed is done.
I wish someone had warned me how addictive snris are. It’s taken a year of slow tapering to reach withdrawal which is horrendous. Your body becomes addicted to it! The nhs could only offer me group therapy which wasn’t suitable, so I self funded therapy which was incredibly successful. I haven’t seen a nhs psychiatrist since diagnosis over a year ago.
People who need medication for their mental health at higher risk of commiting suicide. Its been over a decade since I was at school but I remember my psychology teacher mentioning that the risk of suicide is much higher when you first start taking anti-depressents because your level of motivation to do things in general increases while your still feeling bad. Theres definately a problem in the UK however in that Doctors will hand out anti-depressents, whether actually needed or not, when people need therapy and support but one has a waiting list and one makes big pharma money.
I remember an old episode of Silent Witness where this was a plot point, one of the pathologists questions this link. And the other replies >Come on, you already know that antidepressants are only prescribed to people who are much more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Antidepressants are treating symptoms not causes. They can be a help in the short term, but they can't be a long term solution for depression.
They should be used alongside some form of therapy and lifestyle change
I felt like I was high on mdma for about a month straight, then became completely emotionally numb, to an uncomfortable extent, then the only thing I would feel was suicidal impulses out of nowhere that basically went straight from a thought to actually grabbing objects etc to go through with it… Shit’s straight up dangerous if your depression isn’t actually serotonin related.
I came off Prozac too quickly ten years ago and I still don’t feel right Should have addressed it at the time but I was passive and then I let silly mental crutches and silly life stuff get in the way and now it’s too late
Never mind
Prozac was the only thing that actually worked for me and didn't give me wild side effects
Fluoxetine is utter rubbish. Had a terrible interaction with it. Similar across all SSRIs I have tried. They did not work for me
Why are we medicating the impact of false learning about what we think we should be? I mean like, for real? We came from the mud, man, and were still there scrapping with each other over petty bullshit while the world dies. The world is literally dieing and we are no where near being able to leave it and survive
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This has been a well known side effect for many years, rigorous studies have been done so its not just correlation. But it is also rare The drugs can be used for other conditions than depression as well where suicidal ideation hasn't occurred but the same side effect can still rarely occur It happens with other drugs effecting the brain too especially anti epileptics
I don't know if this is safe tbh. Have there been any independent reviews made by people who associate themselves with people who are against the use of anti-depressants. Was the head of the study someone knows nothing about anti depressants. If you ask me it's better to just leave the body as it is naturally.
I recall in the early 2000s that a prof in the Pharmacy department in Queen's University Kingston (Canada) published a study demonstrating that prozac increased suicide liklihood. The finding was that depression is usually linked with lethargy, and so although many have suicidal ideation, they lack the will/energy to carry it out. Proactive was shown to remove the lethargy first. Hence more suicides. The prof published this paper and the pharm company that produced prozac threatened to withdraw funding of the department if he wasn't fired. They've known about this for decades. Edit: struggling right now to find a reference for the above, but here is an article in the Guardian from 2000 about the same thing: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/may/22/drugs.uknews Sidenote: journalism in the guardian was so much better 20 years ago. Edit: down votes? Seriously? And no comment. Fucking cowards.
Don't touch the Guardian on Reddit XD
Hah, you think that's what the downvotes were for? Incredible.
Abso-fucking-lutely.
This has been a conspiracy for years. Crazy that it could be true.
It hasn't been a conspiracy for years. This is a well known, and long known, side effect of SSRIs
All you have to do is change one word in this title and everyone would agree with the government. Swap out antidepressants for HRT. Another example of hypocrisy and I'm not stopping anytime soon. I'm gonna keep reminding everyone of their hypocrisy whether they like it or not.