So this morning I woke up to see Newsweek on the table as normal. Being a psych student of course the cover caught my eye as it was depicting both sides of the coin of antidepressants as either ineffective or wonder drugs. I flipped to the articles and read them. I knew the majority of the information presented. There are countless studies that look at the efficacy of antidepressants. The ones which did not yield a statistically significant result were largely unpublished, and the ones that do show significant results are more a result of a placebo effect and the people studied rather than the actual drugs. Most of the studies are biased. Scientists and drug companies alike want antidepressants to work. We all want antidepressants to work, because anyone who has been depressed would tell you that if they could have a pill that would make them happy and not have to live in the dark world of depression, they would take it, in spite of some damning side effects such as lowered sex drive, nausea, etc. etc. etc. This is not to say that antidepressants can't be effective. They are for some people. A personal account on the next page details just that. A personal experience with antidepressants which were highly effective for his personal problems. And though Newsweek uses this short personal account as a representation of the "other side," the author of the article also states that his personal experience does not in any way prove effectiveness for a large majority. Depression is an extremely complex problem which has been introduced into the medical community. Both articles state that the majority of people with depression are treated by physicians rather than mental health professionals. There is something extremely wrong with this.
Physicians use the biomedical model in order to treat disease, and for diseases which we can see with the naked eye which show significant physical symptoms, this works quite well. For so-called "diseases" of the mind, the biomedical model very often fails. We cannot simply give someone a pill and cure them completely of mental ills. It's a widely known fact that even drugs used to treat intense psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia should be supplemented with psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy can and does work, and often without the aid of medication at all. My own personal story proves that. I was offered drugs and refused them. I got better all on my own. My willingness to let therapy work for me was extremely helpful. It is the same reason that people who take antidepressant drugs get "better" after taking them. They want them to work, and they believe in their effectiveness. If I were to walk into psychotherapy thinking it was a bunch of bogus bullshit, the first step my therapist would take is to rid me of that toxic mindset. If that can't be done, then the therapist can't do their job. Antidepressants can have an effect, and do with certain people, but the simple fact is that depression is such a complex problem that the same solution doesn't work for everyone. There are many different levels of depression and ways of experiencing it. There are many different causes of it. In short, all depression is not created equal, and therefore the fact that the medical community is largely in control of treatment of it is quite scary. People think of doctors as wonder-healers at times. Why shouldn't they? There are a great many things that could convince us of this viewpoint. Technology and treatments are oftentimes amazing. Doctors, however, are limited in their understanding of mental illness and treatment of it. It is only very recently that new doctors have been required to study mental illness at all, and even now, often what they learn is limited.
The complexity of a mental illness is difficult to wrap our minds around. There are those who say that depression "doesn't really exist" still.
It does exist. Whether or not it's correct to call it a disease is up in the air. We use "disease" because it removes blame from the person. In this way, it is a valuable way to describe it. If we blame the people who have depression, they will be ostracized and we will not help them when they need help, which is why it is framed in the way that it is.
Certainly it is difficult at times to ascertain the level of someone's depression, and in many ways it is an extremely selfish and self-centered disease, but humans are by nature extremely self-centered, so really it's not so surprising. We are contradictory creatures. There will always be people who abuse help and the system we have in place, but we can't let it sway us from those who truly need aid.
I could probably go on about this all day.
We love to create extremely simple solutions for very complex problems, and I believe that antidepressants are a great example of this. It's very interesting to me that there is such a huge body of research on this and still no definitive answers. The fact that we still have to debate over it proves my point that there are no easy answers, and simple solutions. There is still no "wonder-pill."
None of what I just said here was presented with clear facts and information of course, this is just my opinion on the subject after hearing and reading so much about it, and also my own personal experience. I felt I needed to write something down in reaction to this article for some reason. It is just a testament to how we tend to look at problems in the world through the incorrect lens, and we approach them from a point of view of cure rather than prevent. We need to do both, not just one. The prevalence of depression in our society is scary to me. We are not a bunch of happy-go-lucky people that is for sure. Of course, I one day hope to help treat people who have depression, but it is sad that that is what will give me a job. People who we consider "normal, everyday people" are constantly affected. Clearly there are larger issues in our society which cause such problems, as there are societies that are mostly absent of these afflictions. We have a complex society with complex problems, and yet we are still trying to solve those problems in ineffective simplistic ways.