Pills?

[TCD]

I don't understand the sentiment "I don't trust medicine/doctors." Why is that? I mean, they've not gone to med school for nothing, and most do know their stuff. They as a doctor have an obligation to help you....as you have an obligation to ask questions about what they're doing. If they don't give answers to your satisfaction you keep asking until you are satisfied. And if your doc doesn't want to answer, you start looking for another doc.

If there were more communication between patients and doctors, there wouldn't be need for docs to just throw pills at their patients problems, because they'd know what was going on in their life and their health and would be able to actually help get the problem fixed, rather than just put the proverbial bandaid on it.

If that made any sense.

[Ziggy]

I don't understand the sentiment "I don't trust medicine/doctors." Why is that? I mean, they've not gone to med school for nothing, and most do know their stuff.

I know many vets who spent years at vet school who still don't know what Myco is. Don't be fooled that just because they are a doctor, they know everything. They don't.
But, like with vets, a lot of people will trust them no questions asked because they believe as you said above: they went to school for this, they MUST know what they're doing!
Its a very dangerous way to be, and I think a lot of people who are vulnerable, either weaker in personality or even elderly people, will trust their doctors to do right by them.

Im not saying any doctor would DELIBERATELY misdiagnose or do wrong by a patient, but they are only human.
Yes, it's definitely a good idea to seek a second opinion. And its good that you and me have that conviction and bravery to say 'sorry, I want a second opinion'. But a lot of people don't.
Its like a parent. You trust your parents unconditionally as a child and never think that what they tell you could be wrong or harmful. A lot of people are this way with their doctor.


Certainly we should ask questions, certainly we should challenge them if we feel they're wrong, but the point is that many people will think 'well, what do I know? They're the doctor, I have no right to tell them they're wrong'.

[Wingsrising]

Does every person who take antidepressants need them? No, I doubt it. Even if there were no trend towards overmedication, that would be true, since there's currently no way to diagnose a chemical imbalance in the brain except to to try the medications and see if they work.

But you said yourself:

I know people who have had HIDEOUS lives who didn't run to pills to cope, and are fine now. I know people who had what I'd deem par for the course normal lives who insisted they needed drugs to cope, who are now fucked up.

Bascially, I have a very negative view of taking pills to deal with every day life or 'stress' or 'depression'.

So, basically, you're saying you know better than these people (and their doctors) whether or not they need treatment? Since antidepressants making depression worse is a fairly unsusal side effect (and making it worse long term would be very unsusual indeed) I'd say the fact that they're now "fucked up" suggests that they were much worse off then you thought.

You don't think people should take pills to deal with stress in everyday life? An inability to deal with everyday life stressors is what depression <i>is</i>. If people are under unusual stress, then having a lot of trouble coping is normal, not pathological (although in some situations, particularly when there's a history of depression, anti-depressants may be useful to prevent a relapse into full-on depression).

I have personally had a par for the course normal life and still suffer from depression. Surprise! Depression is biological and therefore can occur even in people who have had totally normal lives, or fail to occur in people who have had very stressful lives but are not biologically predisposed to depression.

Despite the fact that I have had a normal life and normal everyday stressors, I have problems with depression. There it is. While I don't really care much about what you think of me, if you think that makes me weak I do think that's overly judgemental and self-righteous, yes. Unless you know another person very, very, well, you can't possibly have more insight into their lives than they do.

[daisybell]

The reason a lot of people are on anti-depressants when perhaps their situation doesn't merit it? They might well benefit from talking therapy but there are long long waiting times for it, or if you go privately it's very very expensive. I don't think doctors like sending people away with nothing except a "see you in a few weeks' time, and maybe you'll get to see a counsellor in three months" because that isn't going to make them feel better- in fact it may make them feel a lot worse.

I think you have to be careful when you say that you know people who took pills and they appear to be worse off, versus people who didn't and are okay now- it might imply causality which isn't the case at all.

EDIT: and Wingsrising is right in that people you know pretty well can have problems they hide away but still affect them a lot. Sometimes they might even be buried so deep in the psyche that they don't even know themselves what the problem is. Poor mental health tends to repeat on itself, too- the more episodes of depression you've had, the more you're likely to have. Which in itself is a pretty depressing statistic if like me you have had multiple episodes.

[Jazzy]

My husband had a vasectomy, so I don't need birth control

Assuming nothing went wrong. *touches table* (Backup contraceptives, people!)

"Horrible lives" does not equal or cause depression. Pills have little to no effect on situational unhappiness, because the root cause (bereavement, upheaval, etc) is not treated. Also, don't assume that everyone who ends up on anti-depressants is actually depressed- and I don't mean that from a point of view of "these are being overprescribed to people who are not depressed", I mean that from the point of view of someone who's actually been on some. For chronic pain. "Anti-depressant" is a broad term and a few of them (for example, amitriptyline, the one I was on) are more commonly prescribed for other conditions than depression, be they psychological or even physical.

And I'm a little beyond the bonjela stage, hee

[Wingsrising]

Daisybell has a good point. In the US the number of treatments for mental health you're allowed to have under your health insurance is usually limited (my insurance won't pay for more than 20 outpatient sessions a year).

Medication management doesn't necessarily fall under those criteria and if it's done by your normal doctor (as opposed to a psychiatrist) it doesn't count at all.

As far as not trusting doctors: Obviously you should never trust anyone blindly, but there's a common attitude of not trusting doctors or medicine that almost borders on conspiracy theory.

Doctors aren't perfect and don't know everything, but they're not usually out to get you.

Similarly with scientists. Hi, everyone, I'm a scientist! :waves hello: I'm not perfect (I only wish) and don't know everything within my field, let alone outside it, but I'm not out to get you or mislead or hurt anyone. I just want to find out some interesting true stuff, get it published so other people can read it, and hopefully get a job when my postdoc is over. Pretty normal stuff.

But at least with scientists there seems to be this black/white thing: either they know everything, or they know nothing and are terribly misguided if not actually evil. In reality neither is true: we don't know everything (and don't necessarily know any more than laypoeple outside our field of study), but we do know a lot more than laypeople about out particular field of study (and often related fields) and know more about how scientific studies are done and how science works in general, and we're not part of some secret society.

I think doctors are basically the same way.

[Ziggy]

Please do not preach at me as if I don't know what depression is.
I know perfectly well what depression is, and find the idea that you seem to think I don't pretty fucking patronising. Like you said, don't judge someone you know nothing about.....

While I don't really care much about what you think of me, if you think that makes me weak I do think that's overly judgemental and self-righteous, yes. Unless you know another person very, very, well, you can't possibly have more insight into their lives than they do

I never, at any point, said that people who genuinely suffer from depression were weak. Please, find for me when I said genuine depression sufferers were weak.
Why would I say that when my best friend suffers from clinical depression, hmmm? I've also had my own fair share of personal experiences with it and I know the disease pretty damn well, so really, you need to stop putting words into my mouth, or making assumptions.

There is nothing weak about people who suffer genuine depression, I mean hell, it can be a chemical imbalance and nothing at all to do with personality (a friend of mine has an imbalance which means her body simply doesn't produce serotonin, so its a physical glitch and no more means someone is weak than someone having allergies or something)
I merely said, and Im amazed I have to keep repeating this, that not everyone who is on meds is genuinely depressed or genuinely needs said medication.

[Zap]

The only people I know who've been on doctor-prescribed pills, and weren't helped at all, but descended deeper into depression or self-destructive behaviors, are the ones who've abused them, either by taking too many, continuing to be unable to deal with their problems, or by drinking with them.

Communication between doctor and patient (and his family--people lie) is important, because abusers won't be helped with more drugs. This, I've seen up close.

As for me personally... I'm with Cheese. A nice little vacation would do wonders for me.

[Wingsrising]

Please do not preach at me as if I don't know what depression is.
I know perfectly well what depression is, and find the idea that you seem to think I don't pretty fucking patronising. Like you said, don't judge someone you know nothing about.....

In your posts you seem to suggest that depression had something to do whether or not a person has had a horrible or a normal life, or whether or not a person is under unusual levels of stress or normal everyday life stress:

I know people who have had HIDEOUS lives who didn't run to pills to cope, and are fine now. I know people who had what I'd deem par for the course normal lives who insisted they needed drugs to cope, who are now fucked up.

Bascially, I have a very negative view of taking pills to deal with every day life or 'stress' or 'depression'.

Neither of these things is true. Clincal depression is basically a biological condition and is not necessarily related to either past or current levels of stress.

If you say you know those things aren't true, then I believe you. However, that's not what you wrote in your post, and I can't tell what you do or do not except by reading your posts.

Also, when someone posts something that says or implies something that's false it can be useful to provide the correct information even if the original poster actually does know it's not true. Even if the OP knows it, it doesn't mean everyone reading the post does.

EDIT: I figured I should also add: I did read the first time that you don't think people who suffer from clinical depression are weak.

However:

1) You can't possibly tell which people are actually clinically depressed and which are have siutational depression or other problems simply by being aquainted with them. There being no tests for depression at the level of brain chemestry, even psychatrists and the patients themselves can only guess at this.

2) I feel that it's inappropriate to judge people who are having trouble coping and look for help as "weak" regardless of whether they're clinically depressed. I don't see looking for help when you think you need it weak. Clearly many of these people aren't actually clinically depressed, they have situational depression or poor time management skills or unrealistic expectiations or whatever. In that case what they need probably isn't medication, it's short-term therapy (or even just someone to talk to about their poor dead dog or whatever, which is really all short-term talk therapy amounts to) or help with time management or to be given some perspective. However, it's not necessarily their fault that when they asked for help they were given medication instead of the help they needed. Sometimes doctors are pill-happy. Sometimes they just genuinely can't tell and decide to err on the side of caution.

Personally, I have more respect for someone who can see things aren't going well and looks for help to get out of it than someone who persistantly tries to ignore problems for fear of looking weak. To use a metaphor, I have more respect for the man who stops and asks for directions than the man who keeps driving around insisting that he's not lost.

3) I think that the societal tendancy to try to judge whether people who ask for help are "really" depressed (by which I assume is meant clinically depressed) or just "weak" helps perpetuate the stigma attached to depression and discourages people from getting treatment even when the fact that of clinical depression is not weakness is acknowledged. Patients will still worry whether people who find out about their depression will decide they're not "really" depressed and are just weak.

This is especially true since thinking badly of yourself is a classic symptom of depression: clinically depressed people are disposed to think they're just lazy or weak or whatever to begin with.

[Sparrow]

As far as not trusting doctors: Obviously you should never trust anyone blindly, but there's a common attitude of not trusting doctors or medicine that almost borders on conspiracy theory.

Doctors aren't perfect and don't know everything, but they're not usually out to get you.

You're right when you say doctors probably are not out to get you. But I believe that the reason so many people are distrustful of doctors and medicine in general (who was it that said medicine has always been the "withered arm of science"? ) is because so many doctors have such a pompous, overinflated and arrogant attitude about themselves and their doctorly knowledge. I can't tell you how many doctors I've seen who basically blow off my opinion, the patient's opinion, and simply try to foist any number of medications upon me without looking for a root cause. And it's not like finding a cause is a hard thing for a doctor to do-- a few years back, I had emergency surgery to remove a huge cyst on my left ovary, which had grown so large that the ovary underwent very painful torsion. It took the ER doctors EIGHT HOURS to figure out what was wrong, organize a surgery, and finally help me. In that time, I was left drugged up on Demerol while tended by apathetic "doctor's assistants" who didn't even know how to work an IV drip. The doctors even tried to get me OUT of the ER by attributing my horrific pain to a stomach flu. A stomach flu! Pain was in my kidney area and they're telling me it's the flu. I'm so glad my mother was there to tell them to fuck off and to make them examine me. Well, by the time they operated, the ovary had to be removed; it had necrotized. That would not have happened had they simply run a few tests and taken the initiative to help me. Isn't that a doctor's job? That's why I distrust doctors--the unbelieveable incompetence of our medical system (the States, in my case) and the overwhelming arrogance of most practicioners, is the reason why so many people are screwed up. I could go on and on about my bad experiences with doctors (including a mistake with my braces that led to a wholly uneccessary root canal) but this post is long enough.

On the subject of pills--I try not to take 'em whenever possible, unless my headache or menstrual cramps are so unbearable that I can't stand it, or if I need antibiotics. But I don't believe in popping pills for every little ailment. It might have adverse effects later in life, and I don't need that.

[Trick]

Not to be confrontational (me? never) but could everyone just chill the fuck out?

Obviously depression is a sensitive issue, obviously some people here suffer from depression, some very badly, obviously people here know that depression causes you to think of yourself as a weak pathetic parasite of society. People know. Your average NCer isn't stupid.

Ziggy is right, many people do get drugs thrown at them by doctors sometimes rather than the other avenues they need. But I doubt very much she is suggesting that that is the patients fault.

And Wingrising is right, going to the doctors is an unbelievably huge step for those with clinical depression, with situational depression, or some other problem that can lead to mental breakdown.


There needs to be far more mental health education given to those in the medical field, and to general society. I knew nothing about it until I was diagnosed with it and it turned out my whole frigging family has it (well hidden, naturally).

And I'll say this now, if I was having a bad day then I would have found your post Ziggy really offensive and hurtful. But guess what? That's because I'm depressed! In reality, where it is my brain that is doing the thinking and not the depression, I can agree completely that there are people on the drugs that do not need them. But as my doctor explained to me, sometimes you don't know what won't help until you try it - and for some people not to... that perhaps is a bigger risk than giving some to those who perhaps don't need it.

It's one of the biggest fuckers about depression, there isn't really a cure - just things that can help. And sometimes you're prepared to try anything and unfortunately sometimes you come up against a doctor who isn't.

[daisybell]

I just wanted to point out- the distinction between clinical and situational depression isn't very clear cut. "Clinical depression" means depression that is severe enough to need medical treatment- what starts off as a depressed mood due to a big life event (like a death) can become a more serious problem. Perhaps one problem is that it's not easy to tell when a depressed mood becomes clinical depression, so doctors treat them all as the latter. Especially something like mourning, it's a natural response, and most people will come to terms with a death gradually and in the long term be okay. But then there may be some people who don't recover and get worse, who then do have clinical depression.

[Wingsrising]

Ziggy is right, many people do get drugs thrown at them by doctors sometimes rather than the other avenues they need. But I doubt very much she is suggesting that that is the patients fault.

I'm sorry, I have trouble interpreting statements that these people are "weak" in any other way except that the people in question are at fault.

Other than that, I will be the first to agree that many conditions, including depression, are overtreated for a variety of reasons. (True, that has not been my personal experience, but other people's mileages may vary.)

Some of these are good reasons ie, depression can be hard to detect and better to treat someone needlessly then have them suffer without treatment and maybe get worse. Some are bad reasons, ie, Ooo! Perks from a drug rep! Better give out some pills now! Some are bad reasons but not necessarily the individual doctor's fault, ie fear of lawsuits.

The notion of overtreatment is not the part of the post I was taking issue with. If all the post had said is that it seems like there can't be as many depressed people as there are people who are actually being treated for depression I would not have said anything.

Not to be confrontational (me? never) but could everyone just chill the fuck out?

I tend to agree that this discussion is going nowhere. I presume it is clear that I object strongly to some of the things Ziggy (and to a lesser extent, other posters on this thread) have said, I hope it is now clear what it is exactly I object to, I doubt my saying any more will have an effect.

[Trick]

Ziggy is right, many people do get drugs thrown at them by doctors sometimes rather than the other avenues they need. But I doubt very much she is suggesting that that is the patients fault.

I'm sorry, I have trouble interpreting statements that these people are "weak" in any other way except that the people in question are at fault.

I was choosing to go with the person I'd like to think I know a little bit of through this forum than at the post in particular.

I agree that it is very dangerous to label anyone as weak, particularly for mental afflictions whether they be in need of medical treatment or otherwise given the stigma still attached to such things. But I think as well that many of us here, myself included, are particularly sensitive to this issue.

[AngharadTy]

My husband had a vasectomy, so I don't need birth control

Assuming nothing went wrong. *touches table* (Backup contraceptives, people!)

Well, that's the good bit about having a doctor you trust. We know that not only did he cut the tubes, he also removed portions of them, and cauterized the ends, and twisted the ends far away from each other. And we know that his patients have never had children after that procedure (except the couple who paid to have it reversed). And they did a sperm count test a couple times, to get negatives both times. (And we can do another if we ever get worred.) If I get pregnant, it's a Jesus-baby. I don't need backup in this case. *grins*