Has anyone ever been helped by SSRI drugs, if you listen to the

They don't work because most of it is placebo effect.
Just like with everything in psychology, the studies that are published proving their effectiveness have cherry picked data. Negative results are not published.
If you look at history of psychology, they invented the meme of depression as hormone imbalance to justify its use fullness as a discipline after the embarrassment of the Rosenhan experiment.

>>34760526
i know they don't work for anxiety, but for the depression they're supposed to be effective

>>34760388
That's because everyone here doesn't have genuine depression, they are just unstimulated and lack any sort of reputable skills. This stagnant way of life can produce similar symptoms to depression but isn't a really a deficiency in serotonin/dopamine, thus not being real diagnosable depression.

The fact is that most people here who claim to have depression just confuse feeling bad about doing nothing with their life for "muh clinical depression". It's really just a meme perpetuated by fat retards on this board who refuse to be functioning members of society. My apologies to those who actually suffer from neurological imbalance.

I take one. They aren't a cure. Their effect is subtle, and takes several months to reach full efficacy. People tend to stop taking them just when they start working because they feel like they don't need them anymore at that point. They help to stabilize mood and reduce the severity of symptoms. They improve the effectiveness of lifestyle changes, exercise, and therapy with respect to reducing depression. They do not work well when taken along with cigarettes or when used in isolation instead of as one part of a full treatment regimen.

People usually take one of three types of antidepressant: serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI), or atypical antiderpessants such as Wellbutrin, which is a dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Depression isn't something that you cure; it's something that you manage. Mood disorders are stubborn and resistant to treatment. You have to be patient with yourself and with your treatment method or you won't make any progress.

I think that the people who report that these drugs are merely placebos are just impatient. They don't work for everybody, but I think that a lot of people just give up on them too quickly.

>>34760646
Depression is very common. Most people experience long-term depression at some point in their lives. It is more common among those who are not sociable or who struggle with social skills, which many people on this forum say is the case. So, for any given person on this board who says they are depressed, it is more likely than not that they are actually depressed. Depression, like most mood disorders, is particularly stubborn and resistant to treatment. So, if a particular therapeutic approach does not work, that does not prove the absence of clinical depression.

The primary neurotransmitters involved in depression are serotonin and norepinephrine, not dopamine. Dopamine is more related to ADD/ADHD, which is often comorbid with depression. The exact mechanism by which SSRI's and SNRI's treat depression is not well-understood, though their general effects are known due to data from clinical trials. A precise understanding of the mechanism by which a drug works is not necessary to prove a causal relationship with regards to its efficacy as a treatment through clinical trials. It is inaccurate to say that depression is a shortage of serotonin or norepinephrine, as if these were vitamins. It is better to say that these neurotransmitters seem to play a role in depression, and that increasing their effect through inhibiting reuptake from the synaptic gap seems to reduce depression symptoms.

>>34760388
Prozac is pretty rad, mane. You can be pretty OK with life even if your day isn't going that well.

I wouldn't bother with them if I were you. They made me super suicidal for the first 2 months and then didn't alleviate any symptoms following that. There's better things out there that will legitimately help you with your depression that you could get from a local drug dealer.

Literally I need them to leave the house. Otherwise I have major agoraphobia for some reason.

>>34760526
Nobody claims that depression is caused by a hormonal imbalance. Serotonin and norepinephrine are neurotransmitters, not hormones. These drugs do not increase the amount of this chemical in the body so much as they increase the strength of response when nerves communicate using these neurotransmitters. They do this by making the neurotransmitter in question stay in the synaptic gap for longer before it is reabsorbed into the original nerve cell to be used again later. But the total amount of serotonin, etc. in the body at any given time remains about the same as before.

Negative results from treatment are reported alongside positive results as part of reporting the success rate for treatment among those taking the drug compared to the control group that takes the placebo during clinical trials. Antidepressants have a fairly low success rate as far as drugs go. It is a bit of a crapshoot whether an antidepressant will work for you. They are used in depression treatment because they improve outcomes at a low rate, but at a rate that is better than the placebo.

>>34760388
Hey, I'm schizo and I took lots of different kinds. I'm off them right now though. They did slow my mind down a lot and I felt extremely tired all the time, kind of turned life black and white, there wasn't much joy in anything.
They definitely helped pull me out of a bad spot by slowing my delusions and thoughts and. stuff

>>34761054
Suicidal thoughts are an uncommon, but normal, side-effect of using an antidepressant. It is more accurate to say that you happen to have an uncommon allergy to these medications than to say that these medications usually cause suicidal thoughts. I wouldn't say that nobody should eat peanuts if I happened to be allergic to them. I would say that I can't eat peanuts, and perhaps that others should be careful about a potential allergic reaction if they are eating peanuts for the first time.

You were informed that this is a possible side-effect when you were prescribed this medication, and the side-effect happened. If your doctor forgot to mention it, it was still in the drug information pamphlet. The fact that this side-effect happens to some people is why they informed you about that risk. This is no reason to discourage people from using antidepressants generally.

>>34761168
It's weird. For some people, an antidepressant will increase anxiety. But for other people, it will decrease it. I had increased anxiety with one antidepressant but decreased anxiety with another.

They cured me of wanting to jack off. I didn't pull it more than once a month, it was so weird.

>>34761260
Yeah, you would think that an antidepressant wouldn't make you drowsy. But depression is less like sleepiness or fatigue than a constant, dull anxiety or dread, which in my experience is an overactive state of mind that involves incessant automatic, negative thoughts that sap all motivation. So it does make sense if you know what depression is like that it makes you a bit drowsy. But if you haven't been there, you would think it odd that people would take a drug that makes them sleepy to fight a condition that makes you less active.

The people who benefited probably aren't on /r9k/ anymore lol

>>34761386
Yep. Decreased libido and abnormal ejaculation are common side-effects. I think that people might try these drugs if they have trouble with premature ejaculation. That is probably a reasonably-common off-label use.

>>34761488
Eh. Like I say, it takes a long time to make any progress when treating depression. People might take an antidepressant and feel better, but still have problematic depression symptoms. So they might still want to participate in R9K despite taking an antidepressant.

>>34761488
Good point , okiiljhoi

They helped me. I no longer constantly think about suicide

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I took zoloft(100mg) for about 2 years, it didn't really do anything so I stopped taking it and felt p. bad for about a week and still have a few head shocks a day. Maybe they help some people but personally I found it to be more trouble than it was worth.