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

I was very young when my mom started Prozac but do remember how angry and sad she was before compared to after.

Years later there was a time when me and my sister noticed our mom was acting a bit strange -- more snappish and irritable than usual, and she even started dressing differently. Then at dinner she announced proudly that she had been off Prozac for a month. My sister and I looked at each other and at the same time went, "Ohhhh!" Mom was shocked that we'd noticed such a difference in her behavior and started taking the medication again.

I've been on the exact same dose as her for 15 years, and my 7-year-old son just started half that dose.

If I have a good day it's impossible to day whether that's due to Prozac. But since starting Prozac I have been much more likely to have good days than bad. So, since Prozac is cheap and I don't seem to suffer any side effects, I plan to keep taking it in perpetuity.

What I tell my kids is that getting depressed, feeling sad, feeling hopeless -- those are all normal feelings that everyone has from time to time. Pills can't or shouldn't keep you from feeling depressed if you have something to be depressed about. Pills are for people who feel depressed but don't have something to be depressed about -- they have food, shelter, friends, opportunities to contribute and be productive, nothing traumatic has happened, but they feel hopeless anyway -- and that's called Depression, which is different from "being depressed."

> my 7-year-old son just started half that dose

This is horrifying.

Why? If a kid has diabetes, would it be horrifying to treat it? Why would it be different for a neurochemistry issue that makes the same kid tired and sad all the time?

Because the problem's not a "neurochemistry issue" (that theory's been debunked and the "chemicals" in play have never been known), and the solution is "no better than placebo."

Can you provide a source for that theory having been debunked? I agree that data has been found that is at odds with the various neurochemical theories but am not aware of the neurochemistry link as a whole having been definitely debunked.

Whenever I read a comment like this, I’m always curious if the commenter did some basic searching of their own. Just searching “chemical imbalance debunked” yields a wide array of sources. So why ask? It seems almost like a form of Socratic questioning. You want to debate the point, but for whatever reason, are not doing so directly.