1 in 6 on antidepressants in some areas

[Thunderandlightningisfrightening]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13623233/One-SIX-people-England-antidepressants-data-shows-quarter-population-country-drug.html

Can't say I'm surprised. I know so many people on them. About 70 to 80 percent of my colleagues are on them.

With Exogenous/Situational/Reactive depression is it not best to just leave it though? I remember I had a traumatic experience once years ago (trapped in a lift with a fire in the building) afterwards, lots of friends immediately said that I should have some sort of therapy. I was very shaken, teary, and stressed in the weeks afterwards, but figured that was normal and was my brain processing what had happened. I argued that I didn't need any treatment, my state, was the cure in itself, like a scab healing a wound. Therapy might have disturbed or disrupted this process. Likewise the depression I felt when somebody close to me died.
I think we might have lost touch with depression as a normal and curative process.

Also withdrawal off anti depressants is grim. No wonder people stay on them !

Because GPs don't want to take the time/spend the money on investigating the root cause. It's like the contraceptive pill being prescribed for women who have heavy/painful periods. It's a quick fix. Instead of getting to the bottom of the issue(s), they know they can give you pills and send you on your way. There is of course the financial incentive for the drugs companies. Why release the cure for the common cold/flu when you can have people buy remedies? And as much as I hate weed, booze and cigarettes, I can see why people get hooked on them. It's a brief respite from the shitshow we call life.

The last Government systemically unpicked our welfare safety net whilst simultaneously driving up inflation and making everyone's daily life more expensive. People feel less secure than they used to. When people need help it's not available. So many people are barely surviving rather than thriving. It makes perfect sense to me that depression etc is on the rise.

Taking the right high level vitamins and minerals for my conditions, info and exercises from a great NHS physio (luckily saw a very good one after an 11 month wait), very regular HIIT workouts to build muscle to protect my joints, wearing orthotics all the time to correct foot joint issues, doing an intolerance test to find cause of gastro issues and resting when I need to without feeling guilty.
Also tried magnet therapy for peri symptoms (don't think it made any difference), 4-head stick for headaches (takes the edge off), special neck pillow for neck pain and sleeping. This has all been over a 4/5 year period, but got on top of a lot of issues.

Yes it's always best to wait for the mind and to improve in its own time, but I think life is so pressurised now that people need to get better immediately and then continue to hold down their jobs. They even tout having a job as being good for your mental health. Some jobs can be, but many aren't. I don't believe that humans should have jobs as such. Like a previous poster said, we're supposed to live in small villages surrounded by friends and family and we all muck in when it's harvest time and spend our time raising children, looking after animals, making cheese, making clothing, repairing things, building things etc. It was a very hard life and it must have been a struggle, but hiring yourself out in return for money to house and feed yourself and your family is very insecure compared to helping meet the collective responsibility of running a village. If you break your leg you know the work will still get done and you won't starve. If you're sick now you can get sacked, lose your home and have to fight for insecure benefits from the government which can be withdrawn at any time and for any reason. The stress is mental stress now. In times gone by people didn't expect to be happy as such they were just content if no disasters or accidents happened. Everyone was in it together. The rich tormented them I would hazard a guess, but the rich depended on them for food, so......
They also had religion which can help you be more accepting of difficulties and have a more philosophical and pragmatic approach to your existence. They also had shorter lifespans so wouldn't have had the misery of old age, chronic pain and illness then ending up in a shitty care home. We're nothing but captive rats going round on an endless wheel now. Lots of people got off that wheel during the pandemic and it's killing them now they've been forced back on. It's really bad for a lot of people to live this way.

Um, I have an MSc in Cognitive neuroscience and work clinically. I’m not saying that early life experiences don’t significantly shape us and to some extent can change our biology (e.g., our cortisol levels) but to say no therapy can ever change this is blatantly wrong.

also the serotonin hypothesis has been debunked.

So damage to the brain caused by early trauma and abuse can be repaired through therapy?

I also wasn't referring solely to the serotonin hypothesis, I was including all the neurotransmitters which some people's brains can sometimes have difficulty utilising and this can be caused by genetics amongst other reasons.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8187840/ www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8187840/]]]]

The hippocampus can be repaired along with the size of the brain along with the prefrontal cortex and amygdala? I'm pretty sure these changes are permanent. Once the damage is done, that's it, for life. The individual will always struggle to cope with the effects of the damage.

Dont forget that antidepressants also have alternative uses e mg pain relief, hormonal/pmt treatment, hot flushes etc. although I don't doubt large numbers of people are taking them. Myself included.

www.news-medical.net/news/20231105/Lifes-hardships-rewire-the-brain-Study-pinpoints-neural-changes-from-adversity.aspx www.news-medical.net/news/20231105/Lifes-hardships-rewire-the-brain-Study-pinpoints-neural-changes-from-adversity.aspx]]]]

Even if you did, and even if it was - the vast majority of serotonin is generated by the microbiome of the gut, which can be improved with more fibre, etc.

I agree. we can do what we can in a window of opportunity.

@lawnseed The brain is fantastically plastic. Most of the articles you have cited focus on either epigenetic changes or changes to the HPA axis, much of which can be mitigated with the right support. I largely work with women that have experienced significant childhood abuse and/or a diagnostic of a personality disorder utilising a somatic therapeutic approach, and honestly the results we have had have been very encouraging. There is substantial amount of research support for this type of approach to childhood trauma, and in fact several of the articles you have referenced also advocate for this.

In the real world people don't have access to this type of therapy though. Are you doing it as research or via general NHS treatment provision? What category of person would qualify to receive this sort of therapy?

@lawnseed I work for the NHS. In practice, the women I work with have an extensive history of serious and significant self harm plus multiple suicide attempts. They’ve also usually been sectioned at least once and most have had very frequent hospital admissions. I agree that if you don’t meet those criteria then getting the kind of therapy I provide is almost impossible, to the point that many people don’t even realise that it exists. This is wrong and I, and people like me, are working very hard to change attitudes but it’s slow going and comes down to money. In the treatment of severe mental illness and trauma there’s been a bit of a paradigm shift in the last couple of decades towards trauma informed, body centred care but it’s taking a while to properly impact on primary care. I really do hope this changes soon.

It really is true

It doesn't surprise me. But I'd say 80% of them aren't actually depressed. They just use anti-depressants to numb themselves. The way we live is so stressful and unnatural that it's making us all ill. Anyone who has used them knows that ADs don't make you feel happy. They stop you feeling anything at all.

There are too many of us for a start. In 1900, there were a billion people. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It's now eight billion and we're heading for ten. Around here, the countryside is being replaced by endless new estates with disgusting little boxes all jammed on top of one another. And on almost every one of these new estates you have a couple of 'problem families' who make everyone's life a misery. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for two massive estates, and a second huge estate has been built at the other end of the village. But it's never enough. No matter how many of vile housing estates they put up, we always need more, more, more. We've been told that the centre of the village is now going to be built on, and the road that leads into town will have an extra 600 houses built along it. That road is clogged with traffic now, so what the hell will happen when those houses have been finished? Even driving to the shops is an ordeal. This morning, for example, I went to Sainsbury's. The traffic was just unbelievable. By the time I got home my nerves were shredded. I've given up yoga after work because I just can't face the drive there.

Anti-social behaviour is another big problem. I'm constantly woken up by boy racer idiots flying past my road in cars that screech and explode. And we've got gangs of kids from the new estates selling drugs in the field behind our house. The anti-social behaviour is made worse by the overcrowding, however. Because there are too many people squeezed onto this little island, it's almost impossible to find somewhere quiet and pleasant to hide away. Pretty soon there will be nowhere to run. We'll all be jammed into little boxes with noise and violence on our doorstep.

I was reading about suicide cults earlier and wonder if were all living in a giant depressive cult. Emotions, actions and culture are contagious, that's just a fact, not a criticism of anyone. Even self harm and suicide are known to be contagious. Maybe more people are depressed just because more people are depressed, we're infecting each other.

I feel great now, Thanks.

squeek

😂😂😂

I don’t think you can have experienced it that severely.

Ive had situational depression where it made me suicidal. Anti depressants pulled me through.

I think it's really sad that so many people have the need for antidepressants.
Why are so many people unable to cope with modern life?

What exactly makes a Dr prescribe them?
Is it big pharmaceutical companies? An esay way of disengagement from the patient? Some unknown environmental factors? ....

I for myself have never been diagnosed with depression. Yet I am on an antidepressant to keep my migraine in check. They work for me, because every time I have weaned myself off (usually due to lifestyle changes) my migraines come back. But I do hate some of the side effects- and it's not just weight gain!
So how many people in this study are just like myself and take them for other conditions?

When l was teaching, most of my department were on them. It was the only way to cope.