![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
metztlimoonAll over the front pages... Anti depressants don't work.
I'm livid at the way the story was reported. Absolutely fucking LIVID. And I'm not so sure of the motivations behind it, either.
I know what placebo means. But I also know that my drugs work.
I leave the last word to my GP, with whom I raised this discussion this morning. He knows my background in science and with depression, and we discussed that I was concerned about the irresponsibility of the press in this issue. He's expecting suicides as people just stop taking the tablets. I was talking about the news coverage and he said
"It's news. It sells papers. I've not read it. It's going to be a load of shit."
I'm livid at the way the story was reported. Absolutely fucking LIVID. And I'm not so sure of the motivations behind it, either.
Here's why...
The many thousands of people who take these drugs are taking them because they are vulnerable. The report snatches away, from vulnerable people, hope that they will feel better, or makes them feel that it is all in their mind. The majority of these people don't understand placebos, or statistics. They've just been told they don't work.
When you have depression it's hard enough to hold on the the fact it will pass, or improve. They've just been told the medication that helps them is a fraud.
What do I think will happen? I think people will stop taking them, and the suicide rate will increase. Even in those for whom suicide won't rear its head as an option will be forced into desperate measures, like alcohol, other drugs and self harm.
In effect, I believe the report is going to increase suffering for many many people. That's just fucking irresponsible.
On the back of this, the report is going to add to the armoury of the pull yourself together brigade. It's been a long hard slog to try and make people accept depression as a legitimate condition, and that's just been set back massively. Mental health workers, GPs and patients will tell you that the condition is debilitating and mentally and emotionally crippling, it's more than being unhappy. It's not being able to be anything else, for months, even years. Its a condition in which the whole way you perceive the world is skewed, and nothing will change the mood you are in, it screws with peoples relationships, work, and lives.
And then we have NICE. NICE is about to review anti-depressants, and given that NICE's role is supposedly to ensure only effective drugs are used, but more realistically serves to find ways to stop the NHS spending money regardless of the perceived benefit to patients, I imagine they will be very very happy with these findings.
I am entirely of the belief that talking therapies work brilliantly. But there isn't enough available, there isn't the ease of access available, and they take a long long time. Employers don't look kindly on those who have to have an afternoon off every week for 3 months. I'd love to have an hour or two with a psychotherapist every week, but I have to work for a living. Without the use of drugs people would be waiting 6 months to be in a position to function again, rather than a few weeks. Knock on effect, more people on long term sick or unemployment.
There's also the study itself, and I'm yet to run my scientists eye over its failings or merits. There's questions I want answered like: how did they evaluate effectiveness? How do they define mild moderate and severe depression? Which patient group.? Who funded it?
I'm not saying I trust drug company data any more, but try this for size.... if the study is flawed whose front page will carry that story to put it right? I'd also like an answer to these question..... if its placebo why does changing drugs work, why do people get different ranges of side effects, and why do they work even if the individual taking them doesn't expect them to work?
Sure, I'm well aware that inshort term cases, precipitated by life events, the effect is probably due to placebo. Yes, talking will definately work better, but where do we find the time and space to do this? Everyone is unhappy sometimes, but life doesn't allow us that luxury. Do GP's over prescribe- yes they probably do, and why? Because society is secular, and people are separated from their families more so than ever before. There is no successor to the pastoral care of the local priest, (religious role aside), to the support of others. I'm not saying we should step back 50 years, I'm saying society is changing and we need to know how to respond. GPs are the front line now and they haven't the time or resources. (Read some Illich (I recommend 'limits to medicine', he was well ahead of this game).
We live in a society that demands more and more of us in terms of work, and financial stress. We are increasingly fed a must have consumerist lifestyle, are under increasing surveillance, are increasingly faceless individuals fed a steady diet of fear by government and media, and face the mill of short term contracts and long term debt. Society demands qualification, university, constant testing. It demands the newest, the best, and it ill equips it's citizens to evaluate the truth or the need for things.
Depression on the rise? Damn right. Society will be well served to see if the real response to the tide of unhappiness shouldn't be drugs or talking, but a solid look at the value we put on money versus people.
The many thousands of people who take these drugs are taking them because they are vulnerable. The report snatches away, from vulnerable people, hope that they will feel better, or makes them feel that it is all in their mind. The majority of these people don't understand placebos, or statistics. They've just been told they don't work.
When you have depression it's hard enough to hold on the the fact it will pass, or improve. They've just been told the medication that helps them is a fraud.
What do I think will happen? I think people will stop taking them, and the suicide rate will increase. Even in those for whom suicide won't rear its head as an option will be forced into desperate measures, like alcohol, other drugs and self harm.
In effect, I believe the report is going to increase suffering for many many people. That's just fucking irresponsible.
On the back of this, the report is going to add to the armoury of the pull yourself together brigade. It's been a long hard slog to try and make people accept depression as a legitimate condition, and that's just been set back massively. Mental health workers, GPs and patients will tell you that the condition is debilitating and mentally and emotionally crippling, it's more than being unhappy. It's not being able to be anything else, for months, even years. Its a condition in which the whole way you perceive the world is skewed, and nothing will change the mood you are in, it screws with peoples relationships, work, and lives.
And then we have NICE. NICE is about to review anti-depressants, and given that NICE's role is supposedly to ensure only effective drugs are used, but more realistically serves to find ways to stop the NHS spending money regardless of the perceived benefit to patients, I imagine they will be very very happy with these findings.
I am entirely of the belief that talking therapies work brilliantly. But there isn't enough available, there isn't the ease of access available, and they take a long long time. Employers don't look kindly on those who have to have an afternoon off every week for 3 months. I'd love to have an hour or two with a psychotherapist every week, but I have to work for a living. Without the use of drugs people would be waiting 6 months to be in a position to function again, rather than a few weeks. Knock on effect, more people on long term sick or unemployment.
There's also the study itself, and I'm yet to run my scientists eye over its failings or merits. There's questions I want answered like: how did they evaluate effectiveness? How do they define mild moderate and severe depression? Which patient group.? Who funded it?
I'm not saying I trust drug company data any more, but try this for size.... if the study is flawed whose front page will carry that story to put it right? I'd also like an answer to these question..... if its placebo why does changing drugs work, why do people get different ranges of side effects, and why do they work even if the individual taking them doesn't expect them to work?
Sure, I'm well aware that inshort term cases, precipitated by life events, the effect is probably due to placebo. Yes, talking will definately work better, but where do we find the time and space to do this? Everyone is unhappy sometimes, but life doesn't allow us that luxury. Do GP's over prescribe- yes they probably do, and why? Because society is secular, and people are separated from their families more so than ever before. There is no successor to the pastoral care of the local priest, (religious role aside), to the support of others. I'm not saying we should step back 50 years, I'm saying society is changing and we need to know how to respond. GPs are the front line now and they haven't the time or resources. (Read some Illich (I recommend 'limits to medicine', he was well ahead of this game).
We live in a society that demands more and more of us in terms of work, and financial stress. We are increasingly fed a must have consumerist lifestyle, are under increasing surveillance, are increasingly faceless individuals fed a steady diet of fear by government and media, and face the mill of short term contracts and long term debt. Society demands qualification, university, constant testing. It demands the newest, the best, and it ill equips it's citizens to evaluate the truth or the need for things.
Depression on the rise? Damn right. Society will be well served to see if the real response to the tide of unhappiness shouldn't be drugs or talking, but a solid look at the value we put on money versus people.
I know what placebo means. But I also know that my drugs work.
I leave the last word to my GP, with whom I raised this discussion this morning. He knows my background in science and with depression, and we discussed that I was concerned about the irresponsibility of the press in this issue. He's expecting suicides as people just stop taking the tablets. I was talking about the news coverage and he said
"It's news. It sells papers. I've not read it. It's going to be a load of shit."
