The Drug Gap

Funny how just a year ago there was a study out of the UK on February 26th that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos. Guess the authors of this study are counting on us not remembering or that any study out of the National Institutes of Health needs to be taken with quite a lot of salt.

Yeah I'm just whiney - domestic violence is all in my head...

Patriciakay, you sound like a whiny little lady.

where is my post newsweek?Can't handle reality?

Gee, opinions are like ... well, you know. Anyhow, I am a male suffering from depression. I have also worked in the field of research, and I have to say that there are way too many variables in a study like this, and researchers convince themselves that they have controlled these variables through the design of the study, but I don't believe (here comes my opinion) it is possible to eliminate enough variables to make this study mean much. Read carefully--I'm not saying there are no differences between male and female depression, I just question this study. Some of the reasons for questioning it are listed in the reader comments, i.e. male tendency to under-report depression. Others that occur to me are a) this study contains people with other psychiatric issues, which the interviewee strangely reports as proof of a better-designed study, 2) the article acknowledges that hormones are likely a factor, yet I can't tell whether this was accounted for in the study. For example, if pre-menstrual women are more likely to become suicidal, which we can read as depression being at it's peak during that time, then perhaps these women we at a point in their cycles where depression was lowest when the final results were tallied, and therefore they reported remission of their depression. And c) tryciclics (sp?) and SSRIs are essentially the same, the latter being more limited to inhibiting just serotonin. Seems strange to me that there would be any difference in two drugs that do the same thing. Trycics are said to have more side effects. Could that account for why they are reported as less effective? You get my point--too many questions, not enough real answers. Always take that into consideration when reading research.

How interesting that the focus of the study was on drug treatment but not talk therapy.

And even more fascinating, no one bothered to ask if the real gender gap isn't more a problem of a male psychiatric hierarchy doing the diagnosing and treating - wonder what happens to the average female with depression if female clinicians instead of male clinicians are in the picture?

Well, if women and men exibit some different signs/symptoms in regards to depression then should they develop two seperate screening tools used to help determine if in fact a woman or a man is clinically depressed? If the treatment is different should the questions in the initial screening be too?

it is not necessarily true that women are more LIKELY to develop depression. women are more likely to seek help than men which subjects them to becoming statistics. it is projected that the statistics are more even than we think because men would rather "tough it out" than seek treatment. see "i dont want to talk about it" by terrence real.

???While most depressed people experience a loss of appetite, depressed women are more likely to have increased appetite or weight gain, or at the other extreme, suffer from eating disorders, such as bulimia.??? Newsweek Sept 8, 2008
It???s surprising how ???most people??? just leaves you with men when you take out women, especially in an article discussing sex differences in depression treatment. Are there other types of people besides men and women?

hmmm....advanced education, good paying job w/ no breaks in 17 years of professional employment, excellent net worth, world traveler, no divorce, no unplanned or out-of wedlock offspring...on antidepressants since 24...yep, I really need to get my life together.

Lets not judge people for what they need to do to survive. Unless you have walked in their shoes you have no idea what they need. If there is a true chemical imbalance, then the drugs will help. Bravo to the ones that do not need assistance, but there are some that do so the option is there for them. It is not a sign of weakness but a sign of courage to face their problems and not make everyone around them miserable.

Unless you have walked in someones shoes, no one has a right to judge what they are doing is right or wrong. It's not that people can't or don't deal with life, if there is a true chemical imbalance then medication does work. If you don't need the help, then congratulations to you.......but don't slam the ones that do.