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."

Please share your qualifications for making a statement like this- do you work in biology? Are you knowledgeable about the underlying biology here, and the limitations of medical publications?

Not that I agree or disagree with the underlying claim but a call to "credentialism" to dismiss someone's opinion is not as strong in 2025 as you think it is.

The last few years have been a proof that even the "experts" are following strong political or personal ideology.

Also we don't live in the 18th century anymore. A lot of knowledge (especially around medicine) is open to the world. People can read papers, understand research etc.

In this area, having credentials makes a difference. Experts matter.

Few if any non-medical people can read medical papers and make sense of what they say. There is simply far too much context to evaluate such papers, especially in the cases of complex medical conditions.

Sorry but strong disagree here.

I have had a lot of Spinal and sleep issues. I have read almost all new literature on this niche subject and I have brought to my spine doctor some new therapy and treatments they had literally no idea about. Those treatments have changed my life.

As an engineer I read a lot of deep technical paper as my day job. Medical papers are comparatively relatively simple. The most complex part being usually the statistical data analysis.

We have pushed to a whole generation of people that only the "experts" can have opinion on some fields. I encourage everyone to read papers and have opinions on some of those subjects.

We are in 2025. That type of gatekeeping needs to go away. AI if anything, is going to really help with this as well.