For me, personally, I think it's offensive to take pills for something my parents should have given me.
Maybe I'm old fashioned and weird (not to mention crazy), but I believe love can cure my ills.
I may not have had parents who love me the way I need to be loved, but that doesn't mean I'm not lovable. I believe there is someone in this world who can make all my "wrongs" right again. Until then, I refuse to take a pill or 3 to replace my human need for love.
I completely agree with that Neophyte. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I still hope someone's love will make, if not everything, then at least most of it right. Like you I refuse to take pills. I'd rather be unhappy and myself than sedated and not knowing what I feel.
I've been reading from this other website that explores the concept that we (humans) live among an invisible enemy who profits from our own overindulgence in negative emotions.
Noble intentions can be diverted onto quixotic endeavors. Those with good hearts can, due to a lack of knowledge or ungrounded idealism, be led onto a primrose path demanding much time, energy, and resources in order to keep them spinning their wheels thinking they are making a difference when in the big picture their talents could be better applied elsewhere. Discernment requires not letting subjectivity and wishful thinking mask the warning signs that one is pursuing an inefficient path.
Group consensus is a double edged sword. While conferment and agreement between multiple individuals lowers the risk of personal bias, if the entire group can be entrained into agreeing upon a false idea, then any individual dissenting on the side of truth will be rebuffed on the rationalization that an individual is far more likely to be wrong than an entire group. Personal communion with one’s heart and mind should always take precedence over group consensus because the truth is within.
Anything good can be shown in a bad light; anything bad can be shown in a good light. By taking the best promises of a deceptive path and comparing it to the worst risks of a productive path, the deceptive path may falsely seem like the optimal choice. Only by examining the totality of each option can one make an informed choice.
That a method or system “just works” and produces visible results is no guarantee that the system is ultimately beneficial. What results you see may be matched by greater amounts of detriment you cannot see, which is especially true of systems that emphasize substituting technology, ritual, or formula for spiritual practice, self-determination, and discovery. The best one can do is consider the benefits but hunt for the potential shortcomings of a system and guard against them.
Deception seeks to emulate truth as closely as possible while propagating just the opposite. It shares the superficial characteristics of a positive source and hopes the target audience does not look past the shallow mimicry. Ultimately, something always tends to feel “off” about these sources despite surface appearances indicating nothing out of the ordinary; once intuition alerts you, it is the job of reason to help you zero in on the problem.
Oddly enough, you could apply the above principles to adoption advocates, as well. In fact, anyone wanting to break the bond between mother and child should have their head examined!
Researchers find placebos work just as well, except in severe cases
Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and the drugs work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said Tuesday.
Their findings raise questions about the use of antidepressants, the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S. The study, led by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull, concludes that less severely depressed patients might benefit just as much from therapy, exercise or other non-medical interventions.
"There is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective," wrote researchers in the latest issue of the public Library of Science Medicine.
Researchers reviewed published and unpublished U.S. Food and Drug Administration studies of the four of the most commonly prescribed new generation antidepressants to learn whether patients' response depended on how depressed they were to begin with.
The studied drugs included Prozac, Effexor, Paxil and Serzone, which are all so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. About 118 million antidepressant prescriptions were issued in 2005 in the U.S., according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
The researchers found that compared with placebo, the antidepressant medications did not yield clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially had moderate or even very severe depression. The study found that significant benefits occurred only in the most severely depressed patients.
"Although patients get better when they take antidepressants, they also get better when they take a placebo, and the difference in improvement is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments," Kirsch said in a statement.
Placebo effect common in depression The study provides valuable insight to researchers, patients and, most important, primary care doctors who prescribe most of the antidepressants, said David Barlow, founder and director emeritus for the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University.
"The take-home message is there are probably too many people on medications who might not need to be on these medications," Barlow said.
Patients taking the drugs should not stop without consulting a doctor, Barlow cautioned, but they might consider non-medical therapies before beginning or continuing the medication.
Mary Ann Rhyne, a spokeswoman for Paxil maker GlaxoSmithKline, said the study only looked at data submitted prior to the drug's U.S. approval.
"The authors have failed to acknowledge the very positive benefit these treatments have provided to patients and their families who are dealing with depression and they are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice," Rhyne said.
"This analysis has only examined a small subset of the total data available, while regulatory bodies around the world have conducted extensive reviews and evaluations of all of the data available," she said.
JoNel Aleccia and Reuters contributed to this report.
The big-question to ask is: What diagnostic tools can be used to determine the need (versus the false-need) for medication? Is there a baseline chemical level in the blood that can be tested, or some other objective means of measuring a person's emotional well-being?
Considering all the side-effects these drugs cause, I would think/hope serious scientific -medical guidlines would be used when treating patient's with medications.
It just so happens an article on blood-testing was published today.
Blood test could reveal bipolar disorder
Method that could diagnose, assess patients also raises ethical question
By Steve Mitchell
MSNBC contributor
updated 5:01 p.m. ET,Mon., Feb. 25, 2008
A blood test could be used to diagnose and assess the severity of certain mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, according to a new study. But some experts think this raises ethical concerns about prying into a person's mental status.
Lab tests that can accurately detect mental illnesses have long been considered the “Holy Grail” of psychiatry. Currently, bipolar disorder and other conditions such as depression are diagnosed based on the patient's description of their symptoms and the physician's judgment, sometimes making it difficult to get an accurate diagnosis or determine the severity of a patient's condition. But now researchers have shown that 10 genes that can be detected in the blood could provide a better way to assess a patient.
“Patients aren’t sure how ill they really are, and neither is the clinician — sometimes dismissing their symptoms, sometimes overestimating them,” said Dr. Alexander Niculescu, III, a psychiatrist at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, who led the research published Tuesday by the journal Molecular Psychiatry. “Having an objective test for disease state, disease severity, and especially to measure response to treatment, would be a big step forward.”
More work remains to be done to confirm these findings, Niculescu said, adding that tests could hit the market in as little as five years.
The goal of the new study was to identify genes or biomarkers that could be used to track the severity of the symptoms of mania or depression in people already diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but these same genes could ultimately be turned into a test to make an initial diagnosis, he said.
Niculescu, who is also working on identifying biomarkers for diagnosing anxiety and stress as well as hallucinations in schizophrenia, said the bipolar findings could be the dawning of a new age in psychiatry. “It would put psychiatry on par with other medical specialties,” he said.
This could be especially helpful for ensuring a patient is getting the right medication. Bipolar patients are sometimes first seen by a physician during one of their low periods. Consequently, they may be misdiagnosed with depression and prescribed antidepressants, which can trigger a dangerous manic state. A blood test that could be used to monitor the patient might enable physicians to catch this mood elevation before it was too late.
“This may be especially important in children and adolescents, who are hard to diagnose for sure using clinical criteria only, and in whom mood states can change fast, sometimes dangerously so,” Niculescu said.
Beyond the stigma Dr. Carlos Pato, chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Southern California School of Medicine in Los Angeles, thinks a test for mental illness should be viewed no differently than a test for other medical conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease risk.
“We should look beyond the stigma of a mental illness because the most important thing is to have a very clear diagnosis to get the best treatment for the patient,” Pato said.
Genetic testing for disease has long been controversial, but Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and an msnbc.com columnist, said a genetic test for mental state could intensify that debate.
“We're likely to see much more controversy with genetic testing when it's about behavior, mental states and personality characteristics than when you're testing for cancer risk or prostate problems,” Caplan said.
The tests are particularly concerning if they could be used to screen for mental illness in the workplace or for college admittance, Caplan said. Other controversial areas include requiring people pass a blood test for mental competency to purchase a gun or for high sensitivity jobs, such as police officer or to enroll in the military.
Genes predict mood state In the new study, designed to assess the severity of the disease, Niculescu's team first drew blood samples from 29 bipolar patients (27 men and two women) who were also asked about their mood level at the time of collection.
The researchers looked for differences in gene activity (whether the genes were turned on or off) between the high and low mood groups. They then incorporated the results with genetic data from animal models and gene activity from samples taken from the brains of deceased bipolar or depressed patients. The comparison enabled them to identify 10 genes for predicting mood state. (It is not yet known if any of these genes play a direct role in causing bipolar disorder or depression.)
By calculating a score based on whether each gene is active in a blood sample, the researchers could predict high mood if the score was high and low mood if the score was low. When these genes were examined in the initial group of patients, the calculated scores were 85 percent accurate in predicting high mood and 77 percent accurate in predicting low mood.
While this isn't perfect, Niculescu said this accuracy rate is within range of other medical tests, such as some cancer screening methods.
But one challenge of the test could be a disconnect between the results and how a patient says they feel, said Dr. Peter Rabins, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University's Berman Bioethics Institute in Baltimore. Rabins noted that in cases of severe depression, a patient sometimes will look better to their friends and doctors after starting treatment, but will say they don’t feel better.
“So who's right? The patient or the test?” he said. “Ultimately, my feeling would be we have to listen to the person and what they're experiencing and not the blood test.”
Steve Mitchell is a science and medicine writer in Washington, D.C. His articles have appeared in a variety of newspapers, magazines and Web sites, including UPI, Reuters Health, The Scientist and WebMD.
Comments
I refuse
For me, personally, I think it's offensive to take pills for something my parents should have given me.
Maybe I'm old fashioned and weird (not to mention crazy), but I believe love can cure my ills.
I may not have had parents who love me the way I need to be loved, but that doesn't mean I'm not lovable. I believe there is someone in this world who can make all my "wrongs" right again. Until then, I refuse to take a pill or 3 to replace my human need for love.
I completely agree
I completely agree with that Neophyte. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I still hope someone's love will make, if not everything, then at least most of it right. Like you I refuse to take pills. I'd rather be unhappy and myself than sedated and not knowing what I feel.
The truth will set us free
I've been reading from this other website that explores the concept that we (humans) live among an invisible enemy who profits from our own overindulgence in negative emotions.
"There is only one true emotion, love, and there is only one source for it, God. " http://montalk.net/matrix/64/emotional-management
I'm not a "religious" person, but I do consider myself highly spiritual. My anti-drug champaign comes from the following sentiments:
http://montalk.net/matrix/118/methods-of-deception
A recent report on anti-depressants says...
Antidepressants may not help many patients
Researchers find placebos work just as well, except in severe cases
Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and the drugs work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said Tuesday.
Their findings raise questions about the use of antidepressants, the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S. The study, led by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull, concludes that less severely depressed patients might benefit just as much from therapy, exercise or other non-medical interventions.
"There is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective," wrote researchers in the latest issue of the public Library of Science Medicine.
Researchers reviewed published and unpublished U.S. Food and Drug Administration studies of the four of the most commonly prescribed new generation antidepressants to learn whether patients' response depended on how depressed they were to begin with.
The studied drugs included Prozac, Effexor, Paxil and Serzone, which are all so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. About 118 million antidepressant prescriptions were issued in 2005 in the U.S., according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
The researchers found that compared with placebo, the antidepressant medications did not yield clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially had moderate or even very severe depression. The study found that significant benefits occurred only in the most severely depressed patients.
"Although patients get better when they take antidepressants, they also get better when they take a placebo, and the difference in improvement is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments," Kirsch said in a statement.
Placebo effect common in depression
The study provides valuable insight to researchers, patients and, most important, primary care doctors who prescribe most of the antidepressants, said David Barlow, founder and director emeritus for the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University.
"The take-home message is there are probably too many people on medications who might not need to be on these medications," Barlow said.
Patients taking the drugs should not stop without consulting a doctor, Barlow cautioned, but they might consider non-medical therapies before beginning or continuing the medication.
Mary Ann Rhyne, a spokeswoman for Paxil maker GlaxoSmithKline, said the study only looked at data submitted prior to the drug's U.S. approval.
"The authors have failed to acknowledge the very positive benefit these treatments have provided to patients and their families who are dealing with depression and they are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice," Rhyne said.
"This analysis has only examined a small subset of the total data available, while regulatory bodies around the world have conducted extensive reviews and evaluations of all of the data available," she said.
JoNel Aleccia and Reuters contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23348068/wid/11915773?GT1=10914
The big-question to ask is: What diagnostic tools can be used to determine the need (versus the false-need) for medication? Is there a baseline chemical level in the blood that can be tested, or some other objective means of measuring a person's emotional well-being?
Considering all the side-effects these drugs cause, I would think/hope serious scientific -medical guidlines would be used when treating patient's with medications.
ethics behind blood testing
It just so happens an article on blood-testing was published today.
Blood test could reveal bipolar disorder
A blood test could be used to diagnose and assess the severity of certain mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, according to a new study. But some experts think this raises ethical concerns about prying into a person's mental status.
Lab tests that can accurately detect mental illnesses have long been considered the “Holy Grail” of psychiatry. Currently, bipolar disorder and other conditions such as depression are diagnosed based on the patient's description of their symptoms and the physician's judgment, sometimes making it difficult to get an accurate diagnosis or determine the severity of a patient's condition. But now researchers have shown that 10 genes that can be detected in the blood could provide a better way to assess a patient.
“Patients aren’t sure how ill they really are, and neither is the clinician — sometimes dismissing their symptoms, sometimes overestimating them,” said Dr. Alexander Niculescu, III, a psychiatrist at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, who led the research published Tuesday by the journal Molecular Psychiatry. “Having an objective test for disease state, disease severity, and especially to measure response to treatment, would be a big step forward.”
More work remains to be done to confirm these findings, Niculescu said, adding that tests could hit the market in as little as five years.
The goal of the new study was to identify genes or biomarkers that could be used to track the severity of the symptoms of mania or depression in people already diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but these same genes could ultimately be turned into a test to make an initial diagnosis, he said.
Niculescu, who is also working on identifying biomarkers for diagnosing anxiety and stress as well as hallucinations in schizophrenia, said the bipolar findings could be the dawning of a new age in psychiatry. “It would put psychiatry on par with other medical specialties,” he said.
This could be especially helpful for ensuring a patient is getting the right medication. Bipolar patients are sometimes first seen by a physician during one of their low periods. Consequently, they may be misdiagnosed with depression and prescribed antidepressants, which can trigger a dangerous manic state. A blood test that could be used to monitor the patient might enable physicians to catch this mood elevation before it was too late.
“This may be especially important in children and adolescents, who are hard to diagnose for sure using clinical criteria only, and in whom mood states can change fast, sometimes dangerously so,” Niculescu said.
Beyond the stigma
Dr. Carlos Pato, chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Southern California School of Medicine in Los Angeles, thinks a test for mental illness should be viewed no differently than a test for other medical conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease risk.
“We should look beyond the stigma of a mental illness because the most important thing is to have a very clear diagnosis to get the best treatment for the patient,” Pato said.
Genetic testing for disease has long been controversial, but Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and an msnbc.com columnist, said a genetic test for mental state could intensify that debate.
“We're likely to see much more controversy with genetic testing when it's about behavior, mental states and personality characteristics than when you're testing for cancer risk or prostate problems,” Caplan said.
The tests are particularly concerning if they could be used to screen for mental illness in the workplace or for college admittance, Caplan said. Other controversial areas include requiring people pass a blood test for mental competency to purchase a gun or for high sensitivity jobs, such as police officer or to enroll in the military.
Genes predict mood state
In the new study, designed to assess the severity of the disease, Niculescu's team first drew blood samples from 29 bipolar patients (27 men and two women) who were also asked about their mood level at the time of collection.
The researchers looked for differences in gene activity (whether the genes were turned on or off) between the high and low mood groups. They then incorporated the results with genetic data from animal models and gene activity from samples taken from the brains of deceased bipolar or depressed patients. The comparison enabled them to identify 10 genes for predicting mood state. (It is not yet known if any of these genes play a direct role in causing bipolar disorder or depression.)
By calculating a score based on whether each gene is active in a blood sample, the researchers could predict high mood if the score was high and low mood if the score was low. When these genes were examined in the initial group of patients, the calculated scores were 85 percent accurate in predicting high mood and 77 percent accurate in predicting low mood.
While this isn't perfect, Niculescu said this accuracy rate is within range of other medical tests, such as some cancer screening methods.
But one challenge of the test could be a disconnect between the results and how a patient says they feel, said Dr. Peter Rabins, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University's Berman Bioethics Institute in Baltimore. Rabins noted that in cases of severe depression, a patient sometimes will look better to their friends and doctors after starting treatment, but will say they don’t feel better.
“So who's right? The patient or the test?” he said. “Ultimately, my feeling would be we have to listen to the person and what they're experiencing and not the blood test.”
Steve Mitchell is a science and medicine writer in Washington, D.C. His articles have appeared in a variety of newspapers, magazines and Web sites, including UPI, Reuters Health, The Scientist and WebMD.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23337532/?GT1=10856