Worse Than Placebos

 

 

 "Contemplating Hell"

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Over the years, when I have brought up my encounters with depression, I've heard things like "Take an SSRI! That'll fix you up. And - if one doesn't work, there are lots of others to try.." I've never taken an SSRI and apparently I made the correct decision. In a recent post, Dr Bruce Levine wrote [bolding mine]:    In 2023, Time reported, “About one in eight U.S. adults now takes an antidepressant”; however, Time continued, “Mental health is getting worse by multiple metrics. Suicide rates have risen by about 30% since 2000. . . . As of late 2022, just 31% of U.S. adults considered their mental health ‘excellent,’ down from 43% two decades earlier.” Among the many examples that shatter the myth that “psychiatry is a young science making great progress” is the fate of Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), ushered in during the late 1980s as “miracle drugs.” During the last three decades, SSRIs have been repeatedly linked to higher suicide risk; found to create a far higher percentage of sexual dysfunction than to positively affect depression (with SSRI success rates no different than placebo rates or even lower than placebo rates); and result in withdrawal reactions that can be severe and persistent. In addition to treatment outcome failures, it has long been known by researchers that there is no scientific basis for psychiatry’s serotonin imbalance theory of depression—this now acknowledged by establishment psychiatry, and finally reported by the mainstream media in 2022.      For once, it seems that being an irritating contrarian has paid dividends....

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