Among those who are depressed or have another mood altering disorder, it's a well known fact that antidepressants should only be taken on advice from a qualified mental health practitioner with experience in treating the relevant mood disorder and while being observed by a GP. When reading marie claire's article, what really stuck me was the fact that not one of the people mentioned had taken antidepressants as a last resort or done any research on them prior to taking them. Every person mentioned in the article had been given anti-depressants by their GP as a first hand resort and simply swallowed the pill without knowing what it was or, it appeared, reading the warnings. Antidepressants, like every other form of medication on this planet, has side effects. Mood-altering disorders alter the chemical balance in your brain, anti-depressants help combat this. Your brain is a complex place so its no wonder that, while the medications are still getting to work, you can have severe side-effects.
Going along in the article, I realised something else. Everyone of the people interviews who'd had a bad experience with antidepressants had had an extreme reaction. Research which marie claire failed to make use of, shows that, while these extreme cases do occur, they are few and far between. They also used a quote by a Dr. Tracy which stated that it was "so rare in murder-suicides or mass shootings not to find an anti-depressant involved". Martin Bryant, the man who murdered 35 people during the Port Arthur Massacre, was not on anti-depressants. Hudson, the man who shot dead Brendan Keilar in 2007 in the Melbourne CBD, was not on anti-depressants. Dr. Tracy also states that she has recorded over 4000 incidents of murder-suicides and mass shootings where the killer was on anti-depressants, yet only lists one. Surely she could give the readers the courtesy of listing at least two?
It's also true that anti-depressants can cause a spike in suicidal thinking, but there is a difference between suicidal thinking and suicide, many of us forget that. Just because someone has suicidal thoughts doesn't acctually mean they will commit suicide. The example marie claire used for this was a woman who participated in a drug trail. She had never shown any signs of depression before and, two weeks into the trial, she hanged herself with her own scarf. If you're not in pain, you wouldn't take a painkiller, so, if you're not depressed, why would you take an anti-depressant? Anti-depressants are there to help balance out the serotonin levels in the brain, if your serotonin levels are already balanced, then taking anti-depressants will give you too much serotonin. Too much serotonin is toxic to the body, so it flushes the excess serotonin out, often leaving too little behind. For a person with depression or a mood altering disorder, the serotonin is balanced out, usually without severe side-effects, and they can come off the medication.
Speaking of coming off the medication, marie claire mentioned the case of a woman who weaned herself off anti-depressants... without first consulting her doctor. Anti-depressants are brain altering medications and no one should EVER come off them without the support of a GP. Marie claire failed to mention this bit about anti-depressants until the very end of their article in the fine print that nobody bothers to read.
So, before you go running off thinking about how terrible anti-depressants are, think about those people for whom nothing else has worked, who are using them as a last resort and are using them properly under the supervision of an experienced GP and psychiatrist. If those people didn't have access to those medications, then they would be like asthmatics without ventilation or diabetics without insulin. Imagine that...
Australian Kiwi
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