SSRIs may change personality for the better

To the realist who lives in the past, have you not noticed that since the holocaust and all the wars you have spoke of, we have evolved in science, medicine, and many other facets of human life. I know that by experience depression can hit you hard if you have many trials such as losing someone who means a great deal to you or many other things that people go through. Sometimes people are stuck in a situation for long periods of time that are of high stress and can bring on many chemical imbalances in the brain. Now, we all know that diet, exercise, and good sleep can help the brain recooperate from the stress, but sometimes even these cannot help. Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that we have come along way in medicine and it can help enhance peoples daily lives with the understanding to take meds for only a short time. It has been proven that SSRIs have balanced the chemicals in the brain to help people maintain a healthy way of living. They were meant to take for a short period of time. God is our redeemer and that is where true hope, strength, peace, and joy comes from. Regardless of what people believe we were all created to be in fellowship with our father, this in itself enhances our life with well being and the strength to go on in our daily lives.

Feel Better?Now lets overpopulate the planet.As usual you dont get it.May I suggest telling people the truth for that change you are looking for?Or will that depress them again?No worries you can always medicate them again.Boneheads.

One flaw with treating depression and similar with Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (the assumption is that it is too much Seratonin causes some of the mental illness´); the brain responds to the drugs by producing more of it, growing more places within itself that produces it. So if someone suddenly gets of the blockers he or she is instantly off balance in brain chemicals, is in fact dependant on the blockers to keep from having a brain overflooded with excess Seratonin.

Interesting, in light of the growing contingent of pharmacologists who believe that the serotonin reuptake inhibition of these drugs does not appear to be the part of its action that helps in depression. Rather, it appears that these drugs (and others without any SSRI properties) work by inducing neuroplasticity in the hippocampus. If memory serves, there is at least one cannabinoid that does the same thing (with no SSRI properties) and has a greater efficacy as an antidepressant.

A Realist, there is no need for that kind of language. I do not think you understand how painful this can be for some people. It can seriously effect the way a person lives. It hinders a person's ability to be their real self.

The often ignored side to this is that depression has a particular meaning to each individual. I think we need to get in touch with that meaning and understand its context subjectively. Even if it is caused by objective brain chemistry I think we need to ask what caused that? Because there is no test that can measure the amount of serotonin in the living brain – no way to even know what a low or normal level of serotonin is, let alone show that depression medication fixes these levels. While antidepressant drugs such as Prozac increase serotonin levels in the brain, this doesn’t mean that depression is caused by a serotonin shortage. Not to mention that there is a danger that, in some people, antidepressant treatment will cause an increase, rather than a decrease, in depression. In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that all depression medications include a warning label about the increased risk of suicide in children and young adults. The suicide risk is particularly great during the first month to two months of treatment. Antidepressants aren’t a cure. Medication may treat some symptoms of depression, but can’t change underlying contributions to depression in your life. Antidepressants won’t solve your problems if you’re depressed because of a dead-end job, a pessimistic outlook, or an unhealthy relationship. That’s where therapy and other lifestyle changes come in. Studies show that therapy works just as well as antidepressants in treating depression, and it’s better at preventing relapse once treatment ends. While depression medication only helps as long as you’re taking it, the emotional insights and coping skills acquired during therapy can have a more lasting effect on depression. However, if your depression is so severe that you don't have the energy to pursue treatment, a brief trial of antidepressants may boost your mood to a level where you can focus on therapy.

These drugs give people more control over their consciousness than they might otherwise have. What's with Realist's opposition and the notion that these drugs provide some kind of fake happiness? Realizing that the world is shitty is useless if you're too depressed to go out and do something about it.

Well without an SSRI I personally feel like life isn't worth living. I take one pill a day, Zoloft. No I do NOT enjoy nor want to take a pill every day to feel happy. The pill doesn't give me fake happiness, however it does remove the darkness surrounding me and allows me to see the happiness in every day life. You do make life what it is and if you can see through the dark veil then life can and will improve.

I am not mindless on the drug, I am finally ME, who I was before in my younger years. I do remember those younger years when I didn't spend my days in depression and anxiety feeling like crap.

The pills are not a cure all, but a tool to get your life back on track.

Clinical depression is real, I don't think there is any real doubt about that, and it is caused by brain chemistry.

People with relatively normal brain chemistry probably should not take these drugs. But people with genuine depression can benefit. Without the drugs, the depression can be crippling.

Bullshit.

How about this study folks: take two groups of clinically depressed individuals and expose them to a detailed understanding of the 5000 years of human wars fought throughout history.

Have the first group on reality denying-emotional suppressing-consciousness numbing-creativity blocking-keep me a good mindless capital-consumerist-pills (paroxetine) and then just have your good ol' sober neurotic extroverts in the second group.

Then assess how each group responds emotionally (as far as how they actually 'neurotically' feel or relate to lets say just that one instance of 6 million humans being killed in the holocaust, not to mention hiroshima and nagasaki) and then measure their cognitive/intellectual responses to how they actually justify this very very large part of our human nature and history in their own emotional well-being and minds.

I think that what we will find in the first group is a bunch of mindless fuck-tards completely dissociated from their own subjectivity with no real connection or perspective on the reality of history or themselves, and with the second group most likely finding themselves ready to stand up for and empower themselves from suffering through understanding and compassion.

What would this prove? That depression is a reality. It's a realization, not chemical imbalance, not an individual problem, and not the lack of "happiness", but a socially constructed and historical problem. Its a collective symptom of the reality of the human condition, and the more its accepted, the more you, the individual pushes through the anxiety and neuroticism created by our aggressive-dominating social agenda that re-inforces the lack of community, and the more we reject the isolated individual western ego that wants to be "happy" the more we will in turn create more meaningful world community(a new spirituality/religion) and lessen depression.

Happiness isn't something to strive for, it just happens to you. To prescribe artificial happiness as a healthy constant state of being would be like saying "enjoy the grand canyon, but only by looking at pictures of it every day, dont actually go there and have a real experience or journey, thats too risky."

When Psychology bailed on Philosophy it made hollow flatland Psycho-Pharmacology, in service to a consumer capitalistic military-industrial agenda.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."

It's lack of serotonin uptake, and thus more serotonin, that causes those things. SSRI stands for "selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor."