Alternatives to Anti-Depressants
Question: To treat depression, what remedy do you suggest other than antidepressants? I’m taking 200mg of Zoloft, but I feel just as depressed as I did two years ago. My sex drive has virtually ended. Is there not another way to treat depression? Possibly talk therapy once or twice a week?
Answer from Mental Health Expert Dr. Charles Raison
Psychiatrist, Emory University Medical School:
You have already hit upon the other treatment for depression that is supported strongly by data from well-designed studies, and that is psychotherapy. Most people who do not specialize in psychiatry don’t realize that studies have again and again shown that regular psychotherapy works at least as well as antidepressants and may have the added benefit of producing longer-lasting effects once the treatment is finished.
We know a fair amount about who is more likely to respond to medications or therapy.
For example, people who become so depressed that their sleep becomes profoundly disrupted or that they lose touch with reality and develop psychotic symptoms are more likely to benefit from a medication-based approach.
(more…)
Depressed? Fish oil might help
(Reuters Health) – If you’re feeling depressed, you might feel better if you take fish oil supplements, a new study shows.
Some patients in the study, but not all, got relief from the omega 3 fatty acids in the fish oil. The ones who did improve – about half the group – were those who didn’t also have a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder.
The other half – depressed people who had anxiety disorders, too – didn’t get any clear benefit from taking the supplements compared to placebo.
(more…)
Americans prefer drugs for depression: survey
(Reuters) – Americans prefer drugs to talk therapy for depression, with nearly 80 percent taking a pill for the condition, Consumer Reports said on Tuesday.
The most popular class of drugs remain the so-called SSRIs such as Prozac, the group found. People found newer, pricier antidepressants less desirable because of side-effects.
Patients benefited just as much from therapy — almost any kind of therapy, the consumer group found in its survey of 1,500 readers.
Those surveyed said they improved just as much after seven or more sessions of talk therapy as if they took drugs and it did not matter if the therapist was a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker.
Nearly 80 percent of people who had been diagnosed with depression or anxiety were prescribed antidepressants.
Patients were happiest with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, a class that includes Eli Lilly and Co’s Prozac or its generic equivalent fluoxetine;, Pfizer Inc’s Zoloft or sertraline, and Celexa or citalopram and Lexapro o escitalopram from Forest Laboratories Inc.
People complained of more side-effects from serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors or SNRIs, a newer, often more expensive class of antidepressants, the survey found.
These include venlafaxine, made by Pfizer-owned Wyeth under the Effexor brand name and Lilly’s duloxetine, sold as Cymbalta.
The survey found a range of side-effects, but the most common one — loss of sexual interest or ability — was less common than in past surveys, the consumer group said.
Magnet Treatment for Depression Works for Some
By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
May 4, 2010 — A controversial new treatment for depression, rTMS, helps some patients, a rigorous government-funded study finds.
The treatment is called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. It’s basically an electromagnet. When applied to the skull just behind the left forehead, the device induces a tiny electric current in a part of the brain linked to depression.
Because the device carries little risk, the FDA in October 2008 cleared the device for treatment of major clinical depression in adults who got no relief from first-line antidepressant treatment. But questions remained about whether the device really helps depression.
Remission of Depression Achieved in Some
The biggest hurdle to studying the device was finding an inactive placebo to compare it with. In earlier studies, patients and researchers had no trouble telling the real device from a sham. That’s important because the placebo effect — the tendency of some people to get better from fake treatment — is strong in clinical trials of depression treatments.
(more…)
In Sleepless Nights, a Hope for Treating Depression
Is there anything good about insomnia? Could there possibly be any upside to a long, torturous sleepless night?
To answer the question, let’s look at another condition entirely.
Postpartum depression affects between 5 percent and 25 percent of new mothers. Symptoms — including sadness, fatigue, appetite changes, crying, anxiety and irritability — usually occur in the first few months after child birth. There is a simple way to alleviate postpartum depression in just a few hours: sleep deprivation.
If a depressed mother stays up all night, or even the last half of the night, it is likely that by morning the depression will lift. Although this sounds too good to be true, it has been well documented in over 1,700 patients in more than 75 published papers during the last 40 years.[1] Sleep deprivation used as a treatment for depression is efficacious and robust: it works quickly, is relatively easy to administer, inexpensive, relatively safe and it also alleviates other types of clinical depression. Sleep deprivation can elevate your mood even if you are not depressed, and can induce euphoria. This throws a new light on insomnia.
(more…)
What are antidepressants’ long-term effects?
Expert answer from Dr. Charles Raison – Mental Health Expert, Psychiatrist,
Emory University Medical School.
Dear Sandra, I had already decided to answer your question this week when early this morning I saw a new study suggesting that serotonergic antidepressants may increase the risk of developing cataracts by 15 percent. How timely, in a bad sort of way, for the central message I wanted to leave you with, which is this: We don’t fully know the answer to your question yet.
It might seem strange that we don’t have more information about the long-term effects of antidepressants, given the millions upon millions of people around the world who have taken, who are taking, and who will take these medications. But humans can know only those things they’ve looked at, and the truth is that very few long-term studies have been done on antidepressants.
In the absence of long-term studies, we are left with data like the cataract findings that come not from a study per se, but rather from examining the health records of many thousands of people on antidepressants and looking to see which conditions are more common in these people than in folks not on antidepressants. If you think about it for a moment, you can see the weakness with this sort of approach.
(more…)
Study finds medication of little help to patients with mild, moderate depression
By Shari Roan
January 6, 2010
Antidepressant medications probably provide little or no benefit to people with mild or moderate depression, a new study has found. Rather, the mere act of seeing a doctor, discussing symptoms and learning about depression probably triggers the improvements many patients experience while on medication.
Only people with very severe depression receive additional benefits from drugs, said the senior author of the study, Robert J. DeRubeis, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor. The research was released online Tuesday and will be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
Hundreds of studies have attested to the benefits of antidepressants over placebos, DeRubeis said. But many studies involve only participants with severe depression. Confusion arises, he said, “because there is a tendency to generalize the findings to mean that all depressed people benefit from medications.”
(more…)
Antidepressants May Make People Less Neurotic
Along With Treating Depression, Drugs Also Appear to Ease Neuroticism
By Julie Steenhuysen
December 7, 2009
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Antidepressants may go well beyond just easing the symptoms of depression; they may also make people less neurotic, U.S. researchers said Monday.
The study of people who took GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil, known generically as paroxetine, suggests the drug may treat factors such as neuroticism that make a person more likely to be depressed in the first place.
“Our data suggests that modern antidepressants work partly by correcting key personality risk factors of depression,” Tony Tang, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, whose study appears in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
People who are neurotic tend to experience negative emotions and be emotionally unstable, often experiencing wide mood swings in a day.
“It’s the basic tendency toward having negative emotions,” Tang said in a telephone interview.
(more…)