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Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

(www.theguardian.com)
206 points pseudolus | 4 comments | 21 Nov 25 00:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.284s | source
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Razengan ◴[21 Nov 25 20:49 UTC] No.46008818[source]▶
> treating depression

Most of the "treatment" is apparently just telling people to stop feeling sad [0], or giving them drugs

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/thanksimcured

but no one bothers to take the time out to sit down and figure out WHY they feel sad and FIX THAT FOR THEM. That takes too much work.

Sometimes depression is this vague feeling that this world is just wrong. That Damocles' sword of mortality. The nagging sense of ultimate pointlessness. You can't really "fix" that. But having stuff to ignore it helps, like video games :')

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1. area51org ◴[21 Nov 25 20:53 UTC] No.46008860[source]▶
Depression isn't just feeling sad. It's not necessarily caused by anything external. You cannot necessarily just "figure out why" you feel bad; that's really not how it usually works.
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2. NoMoreNicksLeft ◴[21 Nov 25 21:28 UTC] No.46009198[source]▶
>It's not necessarily caused by anything external. Y

Then how could a drug fix it? We're positing that there is not only a mechanism causing it, but that this mechanism can be manipulated external to their own self/agency/whatever.

I think that it is at least as absurd to posit that you can come up with one chemical substance or another that will alleviate their depression when you dismiss the idea of coming up with a sequence of words spoken to them that might alleviate their depression. It's the conceit that we have a better idea of how their brains work chemically than we do of how their brains work cognitively.

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3. Razengan ◴[21 Nov 25 21:36 UTC] No.46009269[source]▶
> You cannot necessarily just "figure out why" you feel bad

Well, of course, if you anesthetize someone they can't feel anything. If you cut off the physical pathways of ""feeling sad"" then they can't feel sad, but is that really the same as "fixing" the reason for why they were feeling sad in the first place?

Unless the reason was that the physical causes are running haywire and making someone feel sad when they otherwise wouldn't, but how often is that just uhh a lazy scapegoat? "Oh this person has no reason to feel sad, something must be wrong in their brain"

4. integralid ◴[22 Nov 25 00:03 UTC] No.46010613[source]▶
>Then how could a drug fix it?

Many things that are not necessarily caused by anything external can be fixed by drugs. I don't understand your point.

If the problem is brain not working correctly (because some organ is not doing it's job properly) then no sequence of words will make the brain physically fix itself, just like no sequence of words will cure a heart attack.

Of course it depends, and many people just need a correct therapy. I'm not dismissing talking and figuring out the root cause.