To not understand why people are so anti medication?

[Tambatamba]

Specifically for mental health issues.

My 19 year old daughter has been really unwell and seems to have panic disorder. Finally, after not being able to start uni again because she was having 5 panic attacks a day, the GP agreed to give her some fluoxetine and TG it seems to be helping. I could cry, actually because it has been so hard watching her struggle.

The thing is that as a family, we all seem to suffer with MH. Quite a few of us also have autism (she doesn't though). Most of us are on SSRIs. I've been on sertraline for 10 years and even kept taking a low dose whilst I was pregnant.

All I hear, though is people sending me articles about how awful the side effects are. You 'can't take them forever.' Why can't you? If you lack enough serotonin to feel well why is it not ok to take meds to help this?

I feel like we haven't moved on much in terms of understanding that MH illness is not any different from having physical illness.

I'm so glad to hear yours got better 💖✨ It's a condition that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy 😱😫

Interesting. Have any alternatives been suggested? and I'm not talking about talking therapies, mindfulness etc.

I've been taking venlafaxine since 2009. It was the seventh AD I had tried and it was bloody miraculous! I've stopped a few times and have been back at rock bottom within 3 months.
I've been diagnosed with all kinds of psychiatric disorders over the years, usually with whatever is 'trendy' at the time. In my mind it is simply that my body cannot make enough serotonin and norepinephrine to keep my mood stable. The last psychiatrist I saw agrees with me.
If you had any other condition where your body wasn't making enough of what it needed to stay healthy, you'd accept it and take the relevant medication. This is no different.
BTW, antidepressants do not make you happy. If they did, they'd be called euphorics. They just prevent depression. You have to do the rest of the work yourself but the tablets give you the 'oomph' to do it.

Not recently, it was always known to be false in the scientific community, and really the medical community too.

It was seen as a nice way to explain things to people and encourage them to take the drugs.

All medications can have significant side effects - potentially also unknown ones - and many doctors prescribe without taking the appropriate other measures.

A good example is medication for high cholesterol, prescribed on a massive level. which in fact only helps a tiny fraction of people. It should be retested and if not helping, be discontinued, as there are side effects. But few doctors check this. It's fast, easy medicine. Great for drug companies of course.

Psychiatric drugs are not really well understood, many have significant side effects, their effectiveness is tricky to measure because the placebo effect can be significant in many of those kind of illnesses, and there is some thought that recovering from depression without resorting to drugs is more long term than if drugs are used. There is a fair bit of consensus that they are over-prescribed. Possibly because it involves dealing with the deeper causes of the problem, or ameliorating them, by another .

The side effects aren't minor either. My father is currently in stage 4 kidney failure, largely die to decades taking these kinds of drugs. It will probably be what kills him. He's 70, so not young by any means, but younger than the average person who died of covid. Did he need them? Probably to some extent, but his psychiatrist made little attempt to minimize them, keep dosages as low as possible, or anything like that, despite them causing weight problems that contributed to the development of diabetes.When the drugs were finally looked at due to the kidney issues, most were stopped with no ill effects, other than clearing of a brain fog he didn't know he had.

I was treated with ADs for over 10 years. Over time, they became less and less effective, despite changes in the formula and the dose. One theory is that the brain becomes disturbed by the flood of serotonin and begins to shut down its own serotonin receptors, so that one becomes more and more resistant. One psychiatrist warned me that ADs are not intended for long term use, but I didn't really listen to her at first. At the end, my condition would not respond to any med at any dose. The side effects got bad, including memory loss so severe I had to quit my job. I became intensely suicidal. I realized I was going to die if I didn't come up with a plan B. The answer turned out to be EMDR, through which I realized that my depression was fundamentally driven by childhood trauma and some other factors. My new non-medication treatment put my depression into remission within months and resolved most of my anxiety. Today I view the medication as an unfortunate distraction from the real issues, a distraction which almost ended with me dead or in an institution. I recommend reading some peer reviewed studies of ADs concluding that they are neither as safe nor as effective as they are supposed to be. One author is Dr. Ed Piggott (not sure I spelled that right). His work has found that data showing adverse events and poor results was dropped without justification from initial studies. Other studies show that AD use increases the likelihood one will need more ADs in future.

I've been on AD'S since I was 17, so for 40 years. I look at it that if one of my other organs wasn't working without medication, I wouldn't question it. In my case, it's my brain that doesn't work.

I'm glad you're feeling better now and it sounds like the ADs caused major problems for you. But I don't think you can make blanket statements about general use. I mean, you've just said that your own illness was related to trauma. In my case, there are many many of us in my family who suffer from anxiety and low mood for no reason that we can figure out. There isn't a stressor.

I could never sleep until I started SSRIs. I remember the doctor saying the fact I woke up in the night every night was a sign of brain chemistry being off. I suppose if I'd had negative side effects maybe I'd feel differently but I never have. I had psychiatric hospital admissions before and was unable to look after my children.

Most people take the contraceptive pill without a second thought because of the risk: benefit compared with unwanted pregnancy. I don't think this is really that different.

No point taking medication that will not do anything to help.

@Thethuthinang please can you say a bit more about EMDR and how it's helped you?

We don't really understand mental illness. We don't really understand how many of these medications work or even if they work.

I've taken Sertraline. I'd come off it because i was getting bad side effects, i didn't say anythingto anyone. Family were still telling me what a brilliant change they'd made despite the fact they were long gone from my system.

I do think people see what they want to see a lot. I think they work a whole lot better if you believe they work.

I also have a teenage son with serious mental illness. He has taken a number of antipsychotics. Bugger all has changed for him. I have the odd stupid Dr tell me they've clearly helped a bit, people see what they want to see.

If they work for you, they work for you. But in light of the lack of science behind them and the ridiculous amount of side effects I don't think it's unreasonable for people to be concerned for you.

That is so sad.
No need to be ashamed, and you don't deserve to suffer
Fluoxetine was a game changer for my DD.

I've been on Sertraline for a few years now after suffering a genuinely awful few years (lost 2 newborns, diagnosed with severe endometriosis, undergone multiple rounds of IVF). For me, it's been essential. Before I started taking Sertraline, I was stuck in a dark place, struggling with mood swings and PTSD. I attended counselling but struggled to engage. Taking Sertraline helped me rally enough to engage with counselling and find a way to move forwards.

I think antidepressants can help control symptoms enough to help people engage with talking therapies, making life improvements etc. But it's an individual choice.

So glad your lovely DD is much better and you're a great mum. Your support will help her massively.

Thanks for being so kind.

Self-stigmatisation is huge part of the reason why a lot of people are anti-psychiatric medication. Then you have those who dispute their diagnoses and see taking medication as a validation of an opinion they disagree with. Some others will have had negative experiences with medication previously, so understandably are hugely reluctant to take any others. There are also a few who, while being on compulsory treatment orders, aren't monitored particularly closely, so either opt not to take their medication deliberately, or forget to do so and lapse into poor health again.

Obviously, concerns about effects and side-effects are commonplace and perfectly legitimate, but there are other reasons, and the ones listed above are the ones I encounter most frequently when I work with people considered 'medication resistant'. Anecdotally, I'd say the self-stigmatisation is by far and away the most frequent, at least as common as the people who just have genuine concerns about the long-term effects and possible side-effects.

Sorry I didn't make my OP clear enough. If people are anti-psychiatric medication for themselves then that's obviously fine - it's their body etc.

What I mean tbh is other people telling you you shouldn't be taking it. And people telling me my daughter shouldn't be taking it, even though she really wanted medicine having exhausted other options like yoga, mindfulness, books about panic attacks, exercise etc.

My dd is starting to feel much better btw. She went back to uni yesterday and is finding that she can sleep better.

@TeenDivided I'm so glad fluoxetine helped your dd. It's good to hear that.

Interesting but not correlating with my experience.

I resisted antidepressants as a treatment for PMS because I had a bad reaction to fluoxetine when I was younger. Agreed reluctantly to take sertraline. Very hard to adjust to them initially. But I am almost a completely different person now. Two weeks of every month used to be pure misery and hell: rampant anxiety, mood swings, angry outbursts, irritability. That's all totally gone. They've changed my life.

Self-stigmatisation is huge part of the reason why a lot of people are anti-psychiatric medication.

For me it is the opposite I see it as normal to have responses not stigmatised by a label. I see labelling as the source of stigma and see nothing biological as a cause so no need for anything medical to change it.

I’m very cautious about taking any medicine - it’s my last resort. Every medication has a side effect so I try other stuff first. That goes for paracetamol. Antibiotics… But I know from my sister having a mental breakdown that she needed to be on the right medication first before she had the ability to do the mindfulness, running, sea swimming and therapy that got her life back on track. People should mind their own business.

They can have huge side effects.

They can veil serious problems.

They are a business.

People compare MH with physical health and say "you wouldn't think twice about taking something for a physical ailment".

I'd certainly think twice about popping codeine if I hit my funny bone.

I'm another one whose body reacts horribly to most medications. And a lot of substances in the world that should be considered benign. I take meds if I really have to, otherwise I avoid as much as possible.

I think medication for mental health is there to support you and give you a leg up on your journey to recovery. It's not designed to cure you, more to 'calm you down' in order to cure yourself.

Alot of the time mental health issues are caused by distortions in our thinking, which can't really be properly changed by medication.

And yes, I've been through this cycle many times, and done alot of reading on it.

I’m not anti meds but I do try to be careful with them.

Feel shit and having a fever - do my absolute best not to go for the paracetamol or ibruprofen because fever has a purpose! It’s part of the bodies immune system.

In defence of vitamins ; had major anxiety earlier this year. Turned out my folic acid and iron were zero. Took the tablets for that.

MH drugs do not work well for me - it seems to affect my body as well as my mind. I can have all sorts of odd things like leg reflex kicking out. Unless we are talking lorazepam which agrees with me very well and is slightly too enjoyable.

Big fan of proper painkillers if they are needed. Liquid morphine was a life saver after my c section, I would have been scarred without!