Anti-Depressants: Do they work well?

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I'm kinda curious about anti-depressants. Our family is very anti-drug, but I am curious as to if they actually help, and what people
s experiences have been.

What side effects are common, and does it still come to a beneficial outcome?

Your asking an extremely complex question.

Side effects can range from none to death.

Effectiveness can range from driving you to go on a killing spree to improving your life in amazing fashion.

Realistically though if your depressed and willing to try several drugs and give them all enough time you will find something that has more positive benefits than negative.

Yeah, I agree with TM1.

The 1st side effects that you instantaneously notice is that you feel incredibly more suicidal during the 1st week of taking them. And all the main side effects listed on the label you start to experience, i.e. drowsiness, nausea, increased/decreased appetite, dizziness etc.

These tend to wear off after a couple of weeks.

I'm currently on 20mg of Prozac, and not much has happened, and I've been on it for about 3-5 months now.

My anxiety levels have dropped from 0 to -100, and I feel very less hungry.

Although I'm suffering from depression round my time of adolescence seeing how I'm 15.

Adolescence + Depression =

It probably be different with you, depending how you would react to Prozac if you started to take it.

Not all people get immediate results so don't expect it to work right off the bat. For me it was a slow, almost imperceptible, improvement over a period of a month or two. Of course I had to increase my dose slowly to avoid some of the side effects. For the first couple weeks after increasing my dose I feel either extremely sleepy or extremely jittery (like I want to crawl out of my skin or throw myself off a cliff ). It got better as my body got used to it though .

I take lexapro and it works good. I likely need to have it a bit higher in milagram at some point

Statistically they are no better placebo.

Thats widely debated. But it is clear the common SSRI's are not far
superior to a placebo. Older drugs like phenelzine have a much greater efficacy rate though and are infact far superior to a placebo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenelzine

My own testing of SSRI's is they removed my negative thinking and thoughts of sucide so thats enough for me.

LOL; my mother said that I'd be better off with a placebo.

And alot of anti-drug people support various quack treatment things like diet modification. Studies on those demonstrated they were infact no better than placebo. But since anecdotally a few people do seem to do well on the diet modification its often hyped as a useful for people on the autism spectrum to try. So by that same logic they need to accept the fact that some people do infact respond to
antidepressant treatments.

Most antidepressants work very slowly but have side effects that kick in rapidly. As they modify brain chemistry, these side effects can be literally almost anything. The same drug that causes tiredness and weight gain in one person may cause insomnia and weight loss in another. I've been on Elavil, Prozac, and a few others. The side effects of the new SSRI's are nothing compared to the effects of the old tricyclics.

Do not expect drugs by themselves to make you better. They are best used alongside psychotherapy, and may boost your mood enough for the therapy to get traction.

Good luck.

I have done dietarty supplements and they work quite well. THose studies you refure to are funded by pharmaceutical companies, pharmaceutical front groups and pharmacuetical controlled government agencies.

Yeah some one did a study of who pays for studies and the results
were not surprising the results often correspond to a favorable outcome for the organization funding it. Its why a single study has very little usefullness. I've tried a large number of diety supplements myself before I tried drugs: l-tryptophan, l-tyrosine, l-phenylalanine, dl-phenylalanine, s-ame, St johns wort, Inositol , B-6, proxal-5-phosphate, 5-HTP. Not effective at treating major depression.

I haven't personally had any luck with them, I probably do need a little something but I am done with serious medications that aren't for temporary and life threating disorders (or maybe severe pain). If I ever get a permanent life threating disorder they want me to take medication for I guess I'll just have to die.

Nortriptyline: I took at 14, no good.

Prozac: I took for a while but to be honest it didn't seem to do much of anything for me either good or bad.

Zoloft: Left me mildly dazed and easily distracted/sleepy, not bad but under no circumstances could I drive under it.

I guess I should say that those drugs were prescribed for anxiety though they didn't help me too much, nor did they help the depression I didn't bother to tell the doctors about - except maybe Nortriptyline, it may well have helped it all -I don't know, I remember my life before I ever took Nortriptyline, and my life after I stopped taking it. The time in between is nothing but a blur with some broken images of being at school/home (I was apparently functional to some degree) and lacking any context. My parents had to describe to me how I was acting after the fact. If I ever decide I just want to "check out" I'll be sure to ask my doctor if Nortriptyline is right for me.

[quote/]. Not effective at treating major depression.[/quote]

thats probally just you

I've been taking St Johns Wort for about a month now, I realise it's not a prescribed drug but my mood has most definately lifted. I have found though that I'm having increased mood swings now, with the highs being higher than they ever have been before. At the same time I started taking the St Johns Wort I also started exercising more and also eating better so that might be helping too... I really should have tried all these things one at a time to see what was working, sort of like a little experiment.

Things that might help without needing drugs:
Exercise more
Good sleeping pattern
Good diet
Meditation

The Celexa I've been taking made me giddy when I first started it, but that was jsut a side effect. Now that I increased the dose without asking my doctor I feel like sleeping all the time; I slept for so long today! That alone makes me depressed! I'm WAAAAY better than I was before I started taking it, but it's still not helping NEARLY ENOUGH!


Wow; I must have about 20 or 30 posts complaining about how the Celexa isn't working on me.