Saturday, January 19, 2013

Anti-Depressants

I have trepidations about posting this. When I first saw it earlier this year, I was hesitated to post it for fear it might cause someone deeply depressed to avoid taking an anti-depressant that might help keep them from harming themself.

Of course, if you are suicidal, it may be better to take an anti-depressant and risk a relapse in the future, rather than suffer unbearably today, and not survive long enough to possibly get the new cancer. Like if you have cancer, in order to survive, you might have to take medication that leads to a different cancer in the future, but you might have to take the medication in order to live long enough to get the new cancer.

Each individual has to decide for themself what works for them, and keep an open mind about the fact that we may need to modify our views in the future.

I did not find this study surprising, because of the long-known fact that the body, including the brain, has feedback loops for self-correcting out of balance conditions.

When you are depressed, I suggest trying things like getting enough sleep, working in a garden, hiking in nature, doing volunteer work to help others, listen to music that makes you dance, practice new ways of thinking, like not castigating yourself for mistakes.

If you have a recently increased amount of depression, consider what changes have occurred in your life that might be connected. Eg., one time, problems in my life I had been coping with and planning on how to change them, suddenly became unbearable. Thinking might have changed in my life, I realized I had started taking progesterone for a hormone imbalance. When I stopped taking it, my distress abated.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110719121354.htm

July 19, 2011 — Patients who use anti-depressants are much more likely to suffer relapses of major depression than those who use no medication at all, concludes a McMaster researcher.

In a paper that is likely to ignite new controversy in the hotly debated field of depression and medication, evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews concludes that patients who have used anti-depressant medications can be nearly twice as susceptible to future episodes of major depression.

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The meta-analysis suggests that people who have not been taking any medication are at a 25 per cent risk of relapse, compared to 42 per cent or higher for those who have taken and gone off an anti-depressant.

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Andrews says anti-depressants interfere with the brain's natural self-regulation of serotonin and other neurotransmitters, and that the brain can overcorrect once medication is suspended, triggering new depression.

Though there are several forms of anti-depressants, all of them disturb the brain's natural regulatory mechanisms, which he compares to putting a weight on a spring. The brain, like the spring, pushes back against the weight. Going off antidepressant drugs is like removing the weight from the spring, leaving the person at increased risk of depression when the brain, like the compressed spring, shoots out before retracting to its resting state.

"We found that the more these drugs affect serotonin and other neurotransmitters in your brain -- and that's what they're supposed to do -- the greater your risk of relapse once you stop taking them," Andrews says. "All these drugs do reduce symptoms, probably to some degree, in the short-term. The trick is what happens in the long term. Our results suggest that when you try to go off the drugs, depression will bounce back. This can leave people stuck in a cycle where they need to keep taking anti-depressants to prevent a return of symptoms."

Andrews believes depression may actually be a natural and beneficial -- though painful -- state in which the brain is working to cope with stress.

"There's a lot of debate about whether or not depression is truly a disorder, as most clinicians and the majority of the psychiatric establishment believe, or whether it's an evolved adaptation that does something useful," he says.

Longitudinal studies cited in the paper show that more than 40 per cent of the population may experience major depression at some point in their lives.

Most depressive episodes are triggered by traumatic events such as the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Andrews says the brain may blunt other functions such as appetite, sex drive, sleep and social connectivity, to focus its effort on coping with the traumatic event.

Just as the body uses fever to fight infection, he believes the brain may also be using depression to fight unusual stress.

Not every case is the same, and severe cases can reach the point where they are clearly not beneficial, he emphasizes.

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