We had/have a lot of reservations about it too, and discussed it at length with our pediatrician over months of observation. We decided what was more horrifying was hearing a 7-year-old — who has supportive family and friends, good health, no traumatic events, no major life changes going on, never worries where food/shelter is coming from — say he feels like "he shouldn't be on Earth anymore" and suddenly react with extreme physical anxiety to almost everything. It was bad enough that he couldn't really implement any of the coping skills he learned in therapy. His therapist hoped that medication would bring him to a baseline where he was able to benefit more from therapy. My family's historical success with Prozac also made the decision more palatable since depression appears to be hereditary.
There has been a phenomenal positive shift in his behavior since he started medication. All that said, another commenter pointed out that the study specifically says that Prozac is no better than placebo for depression, which is similar to but distinct from anxiety, which is what my son is being treated for. My mom and I were both diagnosed with depression, but anxiety may be more accurate -- I'm not sure.
I was one of those “medicating kids is a terrible idea” people, until I had kids with severe generalised anxiety. It took a lot to convince me to try it, but it made their lives better in such an obvious, immediate way. The whole experience made me a lot more humble about opinions I hold without relevant experience.
It's important to remember that not being a "medicating kids is a terrible idea" person doesn't mean one is a "every medication is a great idea" person. I'm probably like most people where in a perfect world I wouldn't medicate at all, and treat unfamiliar medications with some skepticism. But also I accept that I'm not (and am not interested in being) a medical expert, so if there is a medical need that I can't handle myself I'll take the advice of a clinician who has earned my trust with good reasoning.
> The whole experience made me a lot more humble about opinions I hold without relevant experience.
I wish there were a way to shortcut this process for society so that so many people didn't need to either go through a similar experience personally to have such an epiphany, or worse, never have it at all. (Speaking not only about medication for kids, but other polarizing issues as well.)
> Depression is caused by laziness and anxiety by hopelessness.
I wish this were true, but its not even close. I wonder how your kids will react when they move away, and you're not around to police their emotional expression. If they're like me, they will promptly collapse into paralysis and self-destruction.
I strongly suggest that you frequently give your kids long stretches of time (months) to practice regulating themselves, without your interference.
And if they have anxiety or depression, please let them see a professional. If my parents had noticed the signs earlier, they would have saved me decades of pain.
At this age I am teaching emotional regulation on a daily basis.
As for when they grow up, adults who cannot manage their emotions get fired or are sent to jail. It is critical to be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and work at building strong friendships.
You imply we aren't teaching emotional regulation on a daily basis? We have always placed a great deal of emphasis on talking about feelings and developing "tools for our toolboxes" to deal with them. Unfortunately those tools are largely inadequate when there isn't a rational cause for a debilitating emotional state.
People who have never experienced a particular challenge are quick to assume credit for its absence and assign moral failings to others who experience it. It's insufferable but common.
Imagine a millionaire who had millionaire parents lecturing his children on how they're not allowed to be poor. Lo! They're not! The lectures worked.
Anger seems to me to be one of the least understood emotions. In my opinion anger should be practised at every possible opportunity in order to cultivate as good as relationship to it as other emotions. Otherwise it will seem like it's out of your control due to not knowing its limits and how much of it you need due to it being suppressed. It is a necessary emotion for our wellbeing.
They're welcome to share their emotions but poor behavior isn't acceptable. Anger is fine. Yelling isn't. We'll talk it though. Tonight i got yelled at 3 times for not helping. I asked why I got yelled at. "Because I was angry". The anger wasn't justified but real so we discussed. I got a hug shortly after. No discipline. Just patience.
We take the same approach! While I don't agree that depression is laziness, we do teach that feeling sorry for yourself is akin to laziness. When we're disappointed about things not going the way we wanted we're allowed to grump about it for 5 minutes, but then it's time to brush ourselves off and move on.
> Depression is caused by laziness and anxiety by hopelessness. My kids know that they aren't permitted to be lazy or say they are bored. They don't have anxiety because they have hope despite circumstances.
This sounds horrible. If I weren't depressed or anxious, being told that I wasn't ever permitted to be lazy or say that I was bored would make me so; and, if I were, then being told that I was lazy and hopeless would make it worse.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not but that is kind of the truth. A breakup is horrible, in its worst case it is similar to an untimely death and can come with grief and maybe even worse because the person is still alive and in your life so you're reminded by their absence even deeper and could experience jealousy, and the drip feed of interaction can elongate the time it takes you to move on with your life and find the person who is more right for you.
But while the sadness is real and shouldn't be ignored or suppressed, wallowing is unhelpful and you ought to move on with your life - just like if someone close to you dies, the deceased most likely would want you to be happy and continue living a good life and move on.
Objectively you're right, but I hope you think twice before saying to someone who has experienced a tragedy, "You need to move on." Similarly if you're in an argument with a friend or loved one and they are upset I hope you think twice before saying "You need to calm down" or, "You're overreacting." Objectively those may all be correct, but they are unhelpful, and are likely to have the opposite effect. They minimize the weight of the emotions. Most of us cannot just turn emotions on and off, much as we try and wish we could.
> Depression is caused by laziness and anxiety by hopelessness.
Others have responded to the depression/laziness part -- I was wondering if you could clarify what you mean by anxiety being caused by hopelessness? To my way of thinking hopelessness and depression have a lot of overlap, but anxiety not so much... It's more like a feeling of dread.
Fear of the dentist is common but understanding that the inconvenience is required for the desired outcome, the reason for the suffering, there is a hope to look to allowing the suffering to have meaning.
> Depression is caused by laziness [...]. My kids know that they aren't permitted to be lazy.
Do you really believe this, or do you believe your children aren't depressed? Your comment is not in accordance with science. Depression is a complex topic. I'm having trouble imagining a way to be more wrong. Is this satire?
You can use me as an example! When I got diagnosed I was very physically active and also quite clean.
One of the hardest things for me with depression is the incredible guilt I have. What right do I have to be depressed when my life is objectively fine? Why should I get therapy when that might mean one less space for someone who is dealing with trauma or poverty or something else that gives them a "right" to be depressed? This causes a feedback loop of guilt leading to more depression and vice-versa.
Like I tell my kids, it's normal to sometimes feel depressed or hopeless. If you're dealing with a difficult circumstance then it's reasonable to have those feelings, and the only way to address those feelings is to deal with the circumstance. What's not normal is feeling depressed and hopeless for no logical reason at all.
I appreciate your sharing your experience. I think it's very valuable that human beings describe to each other their decision making, actions, and outcomes. Often, people attempt to dissuade the sharing of information, and I think that leads to us, as humans, being less able to form an accurate model of the world. I appreciate your pushing through that form of opposition.
It’s pretty tough to exercise or clean your house when getting out of bed feels like an insurmountable task.
Depression isn’t like an infection or cancer—it’s a diagnosis based on established criteria, as are most mental disorders. Experts may disagree on diagnosis or treatment, but that doesn’t make it useless.
By that logic, you might as well say autism is caused by avoiding eye contact—since there’s no blood test for it either.
Ahhh this explains a lot. You should learn about internalized ablism, and probably stop teaching vulnerable humans the same, under the guise of "emotional regulation".
Did somebody else tell you that your emotions need to be regulated this strictly? Did you learn that if you express your emotions you won't get any help? That is not a normal situation to be in.
I understand, but I can assure you that I don’t expect an autistic person to force eye contact with me—especially when it drains their energy. Insisting on that would be wrong.
I’m not opposed to people pushing themselves a little, but we can’t expect anyone to become “fixed” by trying ever harder. That approach wastes energy, is unrealistic, is non‑inclusive, and is simply cruel.
If you think people with depression, ADHD, or anxiety should just push through their symptoms to meet arbitrary social expectations—expectations that are fundamentally ableist—you’re not doing anyone a favor. In a world that’s becoming less ignorant and more inclusive of neurological differences, that attitude will only alienate you, as this thread clearly shows.
> In a world that’s becoming less ignorant and more inclusive of neurological differences, that attitude will only alienate you, as this thread clearly shows.
What an off-topic threat to try and get someone to pretend like they agree with you.
I hope you can take your personal anecdotes and add them to a larger body of research and other people's experience to refine your understanding. If you're right that everyone who has Depression is actually just lazy, you'll see lots of support for that. If, instead, you find a lot of different experiences you might conclude that Depression is a pretty nuanced and complicated topic, which might both expand your understanding and help you bring more empathy to the suffering people around you.
You are very, very extremely inexperienced in this area, as anyone who deals with or has someone in their close family that deals with serious, life-threatening depression will tell you.
And that's okay!
I would encourage you to look at the number of comments from different people who have a history of dealing with this kind of thing for a long time.
I agree 100% and it is an uphill battle requiring significant effort. That is where discipline is required. Exercising that discipline will bring positive results. There is nothing other than self stopping someone from cleaning instead of crying under a blanket.
WTF? You cannot comment like this on HN, no matter what you're replying to or how wrong you think they are. We've had to ask you before to avoid abusive comments. We have to ban accounts to do this repeatedly, and it's only because the parent comment was pretty bad too that I'm not banning you this time. Please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and avoid ever commenting like this again if you want to keep participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You seem to have your mind thoroughly made up, which should raise a flag that you might be suffering from a bad case of Dunning-Kruger, and need to re-ask questions you think you already know the answers to.
> Depression is caused by laziness and anxiety by hopelessness.
While pizzafeelsright gets heavily downvoted, I think their may be some (dark) truth behind it: if you weren't lazy, you would sommit suicide instead of living a depressed life. :-(
I also have a feeling that there might be another (dark) truth behind the link between anxiety and hopelessness.
> Depression is caused by laziness and anxiety by hopelessness.
No offense, but teaching your kids this kind of nonsense is borderline abusive. It's so far away from so many people's experiences, and is just plain wrong. I hope you can recognize how damaging this could be for your kids down the road.
With both my kids in 2nd grade and my wife also a public 2nd grade teacher, I consider myself pretty aware of what kids are being taught these days. They certainly are being gradually introduced to some of the problems of the world, but I think childhood development experts would all agree that's healthy. As for them being told they're the source or victim that's hardly the case. I'm sure there are a few isolated incidents that right-wing media love to bang on about, but not the experience for most.
> but I think childhood development experts would all agree that's healthy.
Could it be that we think it's healthy because we can just give meds to the kids that it affects?
How would someone even have the ability to say "it's healthy" - I'm struggling to think how it comes about. I think it's healthy for my kids to cry about a worm dying in the garden, but anything less than "anxiety about a dying planet"...
Put it another way: climate change messaging IS totally about anxiety and putting human as the cause, so we can (as adults) change our habits and save the planet. Could it be too much for kids though?
I grew up in the 80s and 90s. In school environmentalism was a big deal. We did conservation trips to these ecology parks, we were taught to recycle, and often watched films about animals that might die off due to climate change.
I only felt motivated to annoy my parents to recycle more. Since the effects were not directly in front of me a strong emotional reaction didn't occur.
Perhaps there are children who already have anxiety and latch onto climate change and other problems.
Not sure about you but I didn’t learn my native language phrase by phrase only. You learn the individual parts and concepts and construct sentences from that.
He learned it from being on Earth? And noticing that some people who used to be on Earth aren’t anymore? And it dawning on him that he doesn’t have to be either?
You seem to have a pretty narrow view of the world, especially about “privilege education.” FWIW I’ve never once heard anything about “white people bad” from my kiddo, about 10.
It’s also impossible to to talk about idk Columbus, slavery, Great Britain, or the founding of America (and like ya know, the treatment of native Americans) without ascribing some blame to the people responsible…who were by and large “white”. We also talk about how any judgement based on skin, appearance, gender, ethnicity, or religion, is flat out wrong.
As someone with bad mental health since I was ~5 and parents who refused to acknowledge it - I think you're making the right decision.
There is however also benefit in updating your priors as new research comes out. I won't say this particular research discounts your experience. But maybe some day your son will prefer a different medication.
The solution for suicidal thoughts is a drug known to induce suicidal thoughts?
You said elsewhere that there were "no known long-term side effects". Aside from that not being universally true for any drug I've ever personally researched, no side effect is more long-term than suicide.
Suicidal ideation at 7 years old is not normal kid behavior, neither is sudden and unprecedented paralyzing anxiety over the prospect of ordinary things like going to a friend's birthday party or trying a new playground.
Me and my mom are on identical doses of Prozac to treat very similar symptoms.
We consulted with a child therapist, a pediatrician, and a psychiatrist.
You are shockingly patient and nice to these people who are going out of their way to be judgmental jerks.
Kudos to you; you're inspiring me to find more grace in my life, but don't feel obligated to respond to these people who are trying only to bring people down.
It really does take a lot to be able to deal with all the comments they’re getting, and I know from my own experience that once you’re living a life of both seeing and experiencing struggles with mental health, it becomes something you adapt to rather quickly.
It's also horrifying to hear your 7-year old child talk about committing suicide when you have a deep family history of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
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.
I'll take this sincerely, and ask you, is this really something you've a continuing curiosity about? I have a suspicion you understand what is taking place, but for whatever reason, are not expressing so directly. Are you asserting there is nothing more to discuss after one parses the search results for “chemical imbalance debunked”. The parent is quite clearly, at the minimum, meeting their parent's level of input, which essentially amounted to "this thing is debunked". As an onlooker and after a quick skim of the search query you suggested, I am still not exactly clear on what "neurochemistry issue [theory]" entails. What would help, is a more clear underpinning for what is being discussed, which your parent is suggesting, through question, before attempting to respond. I appreciate this personally!
Ah, well-put! I think we may be reacting differently to the same articles. My understanding is that while various neurochemical theories have not been proven as the general public seems to think, they have also not necessarily been disproven or debunked. Certainly it has not been proven that neurochemistry has no role at all.
I wouldn't recommend searching for "chemical imbalance debunked" unless you intend to confirm an existing bias. The internet will show you whatever you want, and there are enough people who distrust medical professionals that any search for "debunking" will be a minefield of fringe theories and grifters. I'd recommend someone start generally, searching for information about clinical depression, and then build on that to look at root causes and how the medical understanding of those root causes has changed over time.
One of the first search results for me was a paper published in Nature. Other top results were from respected institutions like the NIH and Harvard University. Hardly grifters or crazies.
The caveat you cite applies to basically any and all internet (or even media) consumption, and is therefore a non-argument.
Maybe chip on their shoulder, but the claim of conspiracy theorist is completely unwarranted. The impression you give off is that you decided upfront their sources are bad and you're going to knee-jerk reject their evidence no matter what.
Sad how people start frothing at the mouth during a relatively anodyne conversation. You don’t see it often on HN - more of a Reddit thing - but apparently it does happen.
drugging society is a method of proxying community responsibility , I personally completely understand why people react vitriolically to being told that drugs are not the solution , because without drugs we would have to help each other , and most people dont realize that cooperative multi tasking is the most efficient solution , or they give up because bad actors easily ruin functional cooperative societies , or they are lazy
I think their rhetorical approach to this subject is bad and I have no respect for someone who tries to lead someone to a conclusion while being circumspect about their own biases. This is the internet; one should assume negative intent in these cases.
This all started with someone asking for their sources, and the person hasn't given any except to say to Google... which means for all we know the person who then googled ended up in a situation with lots of conspiracy theories. Google famously gives personalized results to an extreme degree especially when you add in differences in search terms.
I will say if you search for "chemical imbalance debunked" as discussed, the first result for me is a paper that also says dyslexia cannot be proved to be a disorder. Which just from vibes feels really conspiratorial, even without making comments on the veracity of the academic paper.
The person who was asked for sources was a different person than the one who quipped that finding said sources yourself is trivial.
> Google... which means for all we know the person who then googled ended up in a situation with lots of conspiracy theories.
If people have low enough media literacy that they cannot distinguish between scientific research published in refereed journals and conspiracy theories, then I cannot help them and it is not my responsibility to pander to their lack of competence.
> just from vibes feels really conspiratorial
Just from vibes? Clearly you are a scientific luminary.
Yeah, the person making the claim never responded. But I was more responding to your comments, specifically:
"Just searching 'chemical imbalance debunked' yields a wide array of sources. So why ask?", and "One of the first search results for me was a paper published in Nature. Other top results were from respected institutions like the NIH and Harvard University. Hardly grifters or crazies."
Those both trivialize the process of finding sources and interpreting them. I picked my top result which was from nih.gov and gave an example of why it's hard for a lay-person to interpret journal entries because it uses field specific terms that come across as wrong or conspiratorial. Heck the paper itself references other papers on other journals that appear legitimate that argue for the chemical imbalance theory, eg an article from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) from 1993. Just because the source has NIH in it or is in a journal does not guarantee correctness or reliability because time passes and new science is done. The link in question was of a paper from 2006, which we are now further from than the 2006 paper was from the 1993 paper.
I am not claiming to be a scientific luminary and even agree that the chemical imbalance theory that was espoused for years was probably incorrect for many issues. I was just arguing against thinking it's easy to investigate and source claims. It's much easier for the person who is making the claim to provide their sources, and preferably they have a large body of evidence behind them and are recent or even better a source that has done that leg work of reviewing it and distilling it down.
Argue? I considered it a conversation, before your very rude and unwarranted ad hominem.
It seems that you really have no clue what you’re talking about, and are merely lashing out due to your own immaturity and insecurity. Maybe you can find a doctor who will prescribe you a pill that will fix your personality defects. It would certainly be easier than acknowledging your (massive) intellectual and emotional deficits.
Probably because the commenter is not a medical professional and isn't qualified to judge the veracity of anything they find. "Do your own research" is a fucking plague on our modern world and is why the internet is like wall to wall grifters now.
By all means, Google whatever you like, but if you show up to a doctors office waving WebMD sheets in a medical professionals face, you are going to be mocked and you deserve it.
I witnessed a pair of doctors prescribe a family member an incredibly dangerous drug for an off label use. The company had been fined $500 million dollars for various illegal schemes to convince doctors to write such prescriptions, but I’m sure the doctors in question were unaware of this. When this family member began to exhibit textbook symptoms of an extremely dangerous (life threatening) condition which could only be caused by the drug in question, the doctors failed to notice, and in fact repeatedly increased the dosage, and added more drugs on top to treat the symptoms caused by the initial drug. It was not until I accompanied my relative to a doctor’s appointment and delivered a carefully designed incantation that they made the correct diagnosis and halted the prescriptions.
>Probably because the commenter is not a medical professional and isn't qualified to judge the veracity of anything they find.
The average medical professional is worst-placed to judge the veracity of any studies they find than the average engineer or mathematician who's done a solid statistics and probability course. Medical students are assessed on their ability to memorise and regurgitate facts, not on their ability to conduct statistical analysis.
I both agree and disagree. The issue is not independent thinking and research - it’s the low media literacy of the average person that makes them vulnerable to frauds, grifters, and crazies.
With that said, the first few search results for the query were from the journal Nature, the NIH, and Harvard university. Hardly the loony or malicious caricature that you attempt to paint.
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.
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.
It's also good to work with your doctors (as you seem to have done), have a discussion, and mutually agree on a plan of treatment.
Experts don't know everything. But they probably know some things you don't, and can think of questions you might not to have even thought to ask. As the saying goes, "you don't know what you don't know". Experience matters.
There's also a lot of people out there without an academic background that don't know how to properly read journal papers. It's common to see folks do a quick search on PubMed, cherry-pick a single paper they agree with, and treat it as gospel - even if there's no evidence of repeatability. These skills are not something that many people outside STEM are exposed to.
Cherrypicking is bad, but worse is reading a paper and thinking you understand what it says, when you don't actually understand what it says. Or thinking that a paper and its data can be observed neutrally as a factual and accurate statement for what work was actually done.
My experience in journal club- basically, a group of grad students who all read a paper and then discuss it in person- taught me that most papers are just outright wrong for technical reasons. I'd say about 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 papers passes all the basic tests, and even the ones that do pass can have significant problems. For example, there is an increasing recognition that many papers in biology and medicine have fake data, or manipulated data, or corrupted data, or incorrectly labelled data. I know folks who've read papers and convinced themselvs the paper is good, when later the paper was retracted because the authors copied a few gels into the wrong columns...
By extending your statement you are essentially saying that the credentialed experts have a monopoly on knowledge in their fields? As anyone else reading a paper probably think he understands but actually doesn't? What a weird take.
The knowledge is out there. Yes there are a ton of bogus papers and a ton of bad research. Not everyone got the critical knowledge to figure this out but I also don't think this is only reserved to the "experts". They are also subject to groupthink and other political pressure to think a specific way.
At the end of the day, do your best own research and work with your "expert" to agree on a solution.
Pushing back on people reading paper is an anti-intellectual take (to use the same wording as another poster below).
But is that really what you are seeing in this HN comment thread? People who seem very well researched in the biochemicals and meta studies of Prozac? I don’t. :)
> 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.
There's nothing wrong with having an opinion on something as a non-expert, as long as those opinions are not acted upon or relied upon as a source of reliable information. Read papers, watch YouTube, browse WebMD, satisfy your curiosity--knock yourself out. But don't undergo treatment without working with an actual expert! I'm not an expert on orbital mechanics, but I have played KSP and have formed various opinions about it. But nobody should be listening to me for advice on how to launch a rocket.
We need gatekeeping for a reason, especially in the medical field which is rife with miracle cures, snake oil, herbal remedies, detoxes, homeopathy, and other forms of quackery.
Believing my "research" is better than my specialist's education is a path back to the dark ages.
> Believing my "research" is better than my specialist's education is a path back to the dark ages.
Doing your research should not be in competition with your specialist's education. It should be complementary as yet another source of information.
I'm not saying experts are wrong but I also don't think they are particularly always right. They are human and they have strong groupthink. They will agree and disagree with some takes based on their personal or political beliefs.
> Believing my "research" is better than my specialist's education
If you get rid of the scare quotes, you can spend 10x or 100x as long as your doctor when researching something specific enough. That has many advantages, even without the training.
This just reads as Dunning Kruger-esque to me. You think that because you know how to read a technical paper in engineering, you're as or more competent than a doctor.
Yes, experts are wrong all the time, they have the disability of being human, but this seems like an extremely anti-intellectual take.
sorry but your take seems to be the anti-intellectual here.
You seem to think that the educated class got a monopoly on knowledge on that field, yet after that claim to know that experts are wrong all the time.
The anti-intellectual take is to give up on trying to understand as much as you can in a field because you don't have the right credentials to do so. Yes, medical papers are not that complicated to read.
That doesn't make you more competent than your doctor. But it probably makes you a better advocate for yourself than your doctor is.
My point is: Don't discount yourself reading papers and doing your own research. Then work with your "credentialed experts" to come to an agreement. Don't ever think that the "experts" got your best interest at heart.
Nobody who seriously read and understood the literature in a given field would issue a blanket dismissal of all the experts in that field. My experience is that reading papers and research leads one to understand WHY the professionals get it wrong - because you start to understand the nuances.
I'm not saying you issued such a dismissal, but the comment that started this thread did so.
I don't have a problem with reading papers and doing research, and I never once claimed that the "educated class" has or should have a monopoly on a field. You wouldn't know this, but for the first ten years of my career as a software person I was as a college dropout; I certainly am not someone who is going to get all hot and bothered about people having letters after their names.
That said, I have a tough time believing that spending an hour on Sci-Hub makes you better at diagnosis, yourself or otherwise, than someone who spent a decade being educated with decades of practicing. Thinking that you know better than trained experts because you have an understanding of the very beginning of a field is overwhelmingly tempting but is generally not based in reality. Usually the people who have actually been trained in the field know more about the field than a random person who read a few papers that they thought were "comparatively relatively simple".
I read papers all the time, usually formal methods, but sometimes other fields like medicine, and I will sometimes leave the medical paper thinking that it's "easier" than what I study, but I think that's just Dunning Kruger. I know more about formal methods, so I know a lot more about what I don't know, and thus I feel like it's harder. I don't know a ton about medicine, and since I don't know what I don't know it can feel like I know everything, and I have to fight this urge.
By all means, read about research in whatever ailment you have, I'm not really trying to discourage that, but I feel like dismissing experts in the field is almost the definition of "anti-intellectualism". If you find a study that you think is promising, bring it to your doctor. Hell, bring it to a dozen doctors, multiple opinions isn't a bad thing.
I just don't like the general "don't trust experts" thing that seems to be flying around certain circles now.
Ya, well i was diagnosed with a serious genetic condition by my doctor. I found out i was misdiagnosed based on information from the support group for the condition. If I hadn't, I would have had unnecessary surgery.
> People can read papers, understand research etc.
Then he should cite the papers, point out the research, etc. Rather than dismissing the entire discipline and all its practitioners with a wave of the "common-sense mental illness isn't real" wand.
These types of studies are published all the time and can easily be dismissed. Antidepressants are _only_ for major depression. Not mild or moderate. These studies that find no significance compared to a placebo are always tried in patients with all types of depression. Not just major.
It's so common it's a trope. "Antidepressants don't work" says the scientists testing antidepressants on things they're not supposed to work on.
Studies repeated with just major depression all conclude antidepressants are better than a placebo.
Click through the article to the study and you'll find they did not limit their study to must major
I don't think we know if it's a neurochemistry issue. From what I understand what was debunked was the idea that they worked by blocking the reuptake of serotonin specifically.
There’s an interesting theory lately [0] that the antidepressant effect of SSRIs is actually unrelated to its effect on serotonin. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that this is completely true: serotonin has nothing to do with depression, increasing serotonin levels is useless for treating depression, and everything everyone has ever claimed about chemical imbalances causing depression is flat-out wrong.
If so, pharma companies should probably try to develop different drugs instead of new SSRIs. But it does not follow that a patient with depression ought not to take an SSRI. That would be like saying that taking aspirin for aches has been completely debunked because there is no connection between aches and aspirin’s anticoagulant effect.
"neurochemistry issue debunked" is a very weak argument about the (in)effectiveness of proper drugs for treatment of mental illness. It's not exactly known how they work but I am 100 percent sure SSRIs often have a very positive, even life changing effect. Moreover, every approved drug is tested 'double blind' exactly because the placebo effect has such a big biasing effect on subjectively appreciated outcomes. Only when ruling out pure placebo effect, a drug can be approved.
> Moreover, every approved drug is tested 'double blind' exactly because the placebo effect has such a big biasing effect on subjectively appreciated outcomes. Only when ruling out pure placebo effect, a drug can be approved.
Pretty weird the article we're commenting on about Prozac being no better than placebo for children is just now coming out when it was already approved for use in children, then.
> 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."
It most certainly has not been debunked and mind altering chemicals most certainly do work.
SSRIs have _questionable_ efficacy but that's not the same as proven to have none, which is an exceptionally high bar.
If you don't have a serious model for what you are treating, then you are experimenting on your patients and hoping it works for unknown reasons. Not too different from folk remedies. Even worse, patients are essentially never informed that the doctor is throwing things at the wall hoping something sticks.
I've learned a lot through life, one thing I've learned is about detrimental long term physical and even social effects of antidepressants, and other medications like adderal. Both I used to take.
At this point in my life, if I realized my parents gave me an antidepressant prescription when I was SEVEN years old because I said something stupid WHEN I WAS SEVEN I'd be very disturbed and disappointed in them, I'd definitely give both of them a solid scolding.
Before you respond to this remember I'm talking about me. Not your kid or your friends kid or your cousins kid.
EDIT: Quick edit to add when I was a kid I was a total outcast, I was weird, anxious, and definitely often depressed. A lot of kids in my religious schooling systems were.
My kids go to a ordinary public school. They are very bright, cautious, and thoughtful, and generally pretty happy and upbeat. There is a strong correlation between academic intelligence and mental illness. Being depressed to the point of being suicidal and having a sunny disposition are not mutually exclusive at all. I absolutely agree that it would be disturbing and disappointing for a child to be medicated because of something stupid they said when they were seven. I think medication may be appropriate if they show a consistent pattern over several months of physiological symptoms and reactions that are consistent with depression or anxiety, and cannot be explained by external factors like trauma or major life changes.
> My kids go to a ordinary public school. They are very bright, cautious, and thoughtful, and generally pretty happy and upbeat. There is a strong correlation between academic intelligence and mental illness. Being depressed to the point of being suicidal and having a sunny disposition are not mutually exclusive at all.
If my parents said this to me the moment I realized what I was on and that I had to deal with coming off of it late in life I would be beside myself.
I'd probably also look up the doctor that encouraged my parents to put their seven year old on SSRIs so I could warn friends.
If my parents were like "uh well I had virtually no symptoms" I'd lose my mind!
Life sucks, I'm depressed all the time, kids are depressed all the time. There's material everywhere explaining a decline in general mental health. I'm happy and lucky that when my parents (or the one that was paying attention, who was certainly also depressed) noticed I was depressed or sad during a few events, some long lasting, they asked me about it, listened to me, and did their best to give me advice instead of giving up when I was seven and giving me drugs.
Remember when replying, this post has all been about myself, a victim of depression.
I'm a victim of depression too, and don't think it's fair that you say we "gave up." I would never give up on my child. You imply that we didn't talk to our son, listen to him, and do our best to give him advice before we discussed medication? Don't we all try to make the most well-informed decisions we can?
This decision was made collectively by me, my wife, our pediatrician, the child therapist, the psychiatrist, and for what it's worth also my son. We did extensive research. You may disagree with our decision, but please don't cast aspersions on how much we care.
Medicine is advancing. We're increasingly able to understand and adjust dysfunctions that cause major, negative quality of life impacts. These dysfunctions have always existed, we're just getting better at finding ways to help people work through it.
This is empirically false; the rates of chronic physical and mental illnesses nowadays are are far higher than e.g. 50 years ago, and these are serious illnesses, not the kind of thing that could have been just not noticed.
The data is very clear that the rate of mental illnesses is increasing. Rates of severe mental illnesses like Schizophrenia are also increasing.
NONE of the current theories being experimented with on patients have a concrete, proven scientific basis with some such as the decades-long SSRI scam have actively harmed patients and created physical dependence/addiction and actively causing harm to patients and their families (eg, SSRI-induced suicides).
I trust science, but I don't trust scientists any more than I trust any other human with their money, career, and reputation on the line. I trust the FDA and pharmaceutical company ethics even less (eg, Bayer knowingly selling HIV-infested drugs to hemophiliacs, saying Oxycotin is non-addictive, or the revolving door that allows non-working SSRIs to be released and marketed as working despite all evidence to the contrary).
Our ability to diagnose mental illnesses are improving.
50 years ago many people with mental illness would go undiagnosed. They would instead self-medicate through alcohol, illicit drugs, or risky behavior and die far too young after leading miserable lives.
This is an assertion, but there’s no supporting evidence and many indicators you are incorrect.
50 years ago was 1975. It wasn’t the dark ages and the worst cases were already being moved to asylums for at least 150 years before that.
Suicide in particular is hard to hide any suicide rates are going up despite treatment. If mental illness rates are the same as 50 years ago and more people are getting effective treatment, we’d expect per capita rates to decrease.
Impoverished third world countries where people have nothing but problems almost universally have higher reported happiness and less suicide.
Severe mental health issues don’t just go away because you drink and if alcohol could suppress the problems, we’d never have made treatments to begin with.
In terms of “self medicating” with drugs, we’re hitting an all-time high (pun intended). Risky and self destructive behavior is also way up as evidence with our prison systems overflowing.
Nothing indicates to me that mental health is improving and everything seems to indicate it getting worse despite all the attempted interventions.
You don't understand what having extreme anxiety at that age feels like.
As someone who lived through that, I refuse to let him. All of memories of school are just feeling anxious about everything, just tight and suffocated, always in a panic. I started living when I started taking anxiety pills at 39 years old, and I can see my 2 year old having the exact same anxiety ticks and fits I have.
I don't know at what age I'll medicate him, but I'll do it as soon as I notice he isn't coping and happy anymore.
Horrifying is forcing him to experience that because you can't comprehend us.
I'm sorry that you're dealing with this - it was my greatest fear at that point. That my daughter seems to not have my disposition and seems happy go lucky is the greatest thing ever. There's no rhyme or reason to my depression and anxiety, it's completely maladaptive and I'm relieved, that knock on wood, she stays happy and light while not having to shield herself from the horrors of the world.
How do you know an anxiety pill is treating symptoms only? What if the cause is physiological, and the pill treats that? It is entirely possible to sit in your therapist's office and mutually shrug because neither of you can find an underlying reason for your anxiety. Sometimes anxiety just is.
I had severe anxiety/depression and majorly recovered from the anxiety component through a year of dilligent transcendental meditation. It changes the brain structure and neurochemistry.
I was on medication during that period and it complemented my practice, provided a stable base to apply meditation and other recovery protocols.
I had panic attacks every morning before school. God, I hated school. Mainly because of the other kids, and when I was older, because of both the kids and the teachers. I remember telling my IT teacher I am using Linux (I forgot why I told her) and she was very condescending. I have a lot of other stories but yeah, school was an anxiety-inducing nightmare.
Often the cause is things that most people can handle, without being able to easily wield the tools to handle them. Having a pill that dulls the symptoms gives space to learn and become adept at the tools
Beyond obvious tumors/lesions/clots/abnormalities, we are not even close to being able to identify the cause of organic anxiety or mood disorders even if we wanted to.
We can say certain behaviors, experiences, illnesses and some genetic identifiers can trigger the conditions, but not the underlying cause. We can say things like some therapy and medication can help with the illness, but not the cause.
Not to trivialize therapy, but for many illnesses, not just mental, a portion of it can be described as ways of learning to live with the illness, not necessarily treating the underlying cause.
> Not to trivialize therapy, but for many illnesses, not just mental, a portion of it can be described as ways of learning to live with the illness, not necessarily treating the underlying cause.
Yeah, I feel like it's fair to describe the cognitive behavioral model. We're not necessarily looking for the cause of these thoughts and beliefs, tho they may come up, we're simply going to challenge them at face value and reinterpret the situation.
I had terrible anxiety as a child and what I experienced dramatically affected the core of who I am. It is engrained in me and I struggle with it daily, though after decades I have surpassed a good portion of it. If a small dose can help someone have a somewhat "normal" childhood, then its worth a try.
If you're horrified that we are in a world and society where a 7yo has been put in a position where antidepressants help them, yeah, that's understandable. If you're horrified that a kid is taking them, that the parents sought medical intervention for "just a kid", then, I'd say you're reacting to the concept of a kid on antidepressants than actually listening to the OP and their family's history and story.
Often, people react to the concept of a thing rather than the ground reality of life and its complexities of lived experience. Most people also extrapolate (in either direction) others' lived experiences based on their learnings, understandings, pasts and future ambitions. In this case especially, there's also added stigma around mental health, antidepressants and the locus of personal responsibility when it comes to mental health issues.
The _concept_ of a child on antidepressants suspends trust in parents, that's often assumed and unquestioned depending, depending on the child's age. Maybe close to 18yo? Supportive parents. 7yo? Horrible parents. I'd argue it also tends to suspend critical thinking and introduces an unshakeable bias, that a child of 7yo _never [ever]_ needs antidepressants. Why? What makes you say that? What's your evidence and reasoning?
If you feel so horrified by that, can you consider for a moment that the parents recognize the weight and gravity of this decision too? That they had to really think this through, pursue more thorough medical advice than usual, make a judgement call, and have to live through this decision throughout all their lives?
OP's response to multiple comments indicates that they did not make this decision lightly and without making sure that this was the better thing to do overall. I commend OP's openness and honesty in talking about it. It's certainly inspiring to see a parent care for their child's mental health, and not dismissing that to be "oh, the kid's just young and moody, they'll feel better tomorrow."
PS. We (as a society) are always learning more and newer things about mental health and treatments. It might look like we know a lot. Perhaps. But we also don't know so much!
Because 7 years old is borderline too young to even make a depression diagnosis, and that kid's going to have his brain chemistry altered and essentially be addicted to a drug that he'll have to pay for for the rest of his life.
According to our pediatrician there are no known long-term effects of juvenile Prozac use. The effects may exist, but if they do they are of sufficiently low significance as to not have been detected yet. Interestingly the one possible effect she's aware of is that there may be a correlation with not growing as tall physically as one might otherwise. The data is not conclusive, but it gives me something to blame for topping out at 5'10" and never hitting 6' like my dad. :)
I appreciate how open and honest you have been in this discussion. While it might be that taking Prozac is the best choice for your child, I have to admit I would never let a pediatrician prescribe Prozac (or any other SSRI) - this is enough outside their normal training, I would want to consult with a specialist. Can't you get a referral to a pediatric psychiatrist of some sort?
Your pediatrician is either mistaken or lying. Children and adolescents who take SSRIs for major depressive disorder show increased rates of suicidal ideation, suicidal behavior, and hostility towards others. These effects persist for at least 9 months after starting SSRIs.[1]
Common side effects of long-term SSRI use in adults include weight gain, emotional numbing, loss of libido, and sexual dysfunction. It seems to me that anyone taking SSRIs when their brain is still developing would be more likely to have these side effects, and to have them persist after ceasing use.
It's anecdotal, but I know some people who were prescribed SSRIs during puberty. It's not possible to know how they would have turned out if they hadn't taken these drugs, but as adults I pity them. Their lack of sex drive causes relationship problems, which is especially sad since they do want children. They're starting to get older, so I doubt it'll ever happen.
I thought we were talking about long-term effects, i.e. ones that persist to and through adulthood? The sources in that Wiki article appear not to address that.
The clinicians I've interacted with have always warned me of the possible side-effects of psychotropic medications, and said they should be notify immediately if the side-effects appear. I believe this is at least standard procedure, if not legally required?
I do have a low libido. Can't say whether or not that's due to Prozac, but regardless it hasn't negatively affected my life, probably because it was low before I met my wife. If someone enters a relationship while their libido is at one level and then during the relationship it changes considerably then I can certainly see how that could be a major challenge. That's an important thing to weigh when evaluating medication.
In addition to the increased rates of suicidal behavior and aggression in children (which we know lasts for at least 9 months, but don't know if it's longer because the study only ran for that long), the Wikipedia article talks about long term effects in adults, at least one of which you have. Why should it be less likely for children to end up with these same issues?
You are asking for evidence that does not exist because nobody has done good studies on it. That's too high of a bar. There are many drugs and life interventions that we don't have studies on regarding children, but that doesn't mean those things are safe for children. To use an example so ridiculous that we can both agree on it: There are no studies showing long term effects of fentanyl on children. Yet if some parent managed to get a fentanyl prescription for their kid, I think we would both be concerned.
Obviously I'm not implying that giving a child Prozac is as harmful as fentanyl. I'm saying that your line of reasoning proves too much. If someone did get their kid on a dangerous drug, and defended their decision by pointing out that there are no studies on children showing its long term harm, there is nothing you can say to that parent that others in this thread haven't already said to you. That should give you pause.
This is one of the most shocking things I have ever read. There is a black box warning for Prozac:
‘Warning: Suicidality and Antidepressant Drugs
Increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents,
and young adults taking antidepressants for Major Depressive
Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders’
The fact that you were not informed about this should serve as proof that you cannot blindly trust what doctors tell you. They will absolutely kill you out of ignorance or incompetence, and never even realize their responsibility.
Note that the black box warning has nothing to do with long-term effects of the medication. It was added specifically because kids were killing themselves within weeks of starting the medication.
> This is one of the most shocking things I have ever read.
Good grief. I hope you're exaggerating for effect.
> Note that the black box warning has nothing to do with long-term effects of the medication
What are the long-term effects of suicide?
A 7-year-old kid doesn't understand what suicide really means. Putting them on something that encourages a behavior that they don't understand and has completely catastrophic results isn't a risk I would take with my children.
I respectfully submit you might feel differently about it if your child were suicidal. When someone has to be watching them 24/7 already for fear they'll hurt themselves, the black box warning is a lot less worrisome. SSRIs prevent more suicides by far than they cause. It's that first few weeks where they can have a paradoxical effect.
Death is a long term effect. And I am not exaggerating. I did not feel the need to list any of the myriad other potential long term effects because death seemed sufficiently serious.
Edit: in case the OP is reading, I should say also that the package insert won’t mention many other potential long term effects addressed in the literature, like extra pyramidal symptoms (akathisia, Parkinsonism, dystonia, tardive dyskinesia).
Another edit: ask GPT-5 ‘What are the long term side effects of Prozac use which aren’t addressed in the package insert?’ for a list.
It sounds to me like you're saying suicidality in children either doesn't exist, or shouldn't be treated, or should only be treated with talk therapy. If what you're saying instead is "this SSRI is especially dangerous" then ok, you and I just disagree about what information sources are reliable, and that's probably not a difference we can resolve. But if you're saying suicidality in children shouldn't be treated with medication, I'm curious whether you've ever met a six- or seven-year-old who wants to die. It is terrifying. It needs treatment. And talk therapy in children that age is honestly a joke. In the OP's place I would give my child an SSRI without any hesitation.
right which is why they are treating the depression (which leads to suicidal tendencies) which is a symptom of depression, with prozac. that's what the prozac is for. to prevent death
We were certainly informed of this. I didn't count it among the long-term health effects. I'm an educated and skeptical person but have never found any reason to distrust my physicians.
I have many reasons for distrusting physicians, but here's a particularly good one: the large drug companies have been fined repeatedly billions of dollars for illegal schemes to convince doctors to prescribe drugs off-label. From a justice department press release (https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/pharmaceutical-giant...):
'AstraZeneca LP and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP will pay $520 million to resolve allegations that AstraZeneca illegally marketed the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel for uses not approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services’ Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) announced today. Such unapproved uses are also known as "off-label" uses because they are not included in the drug’s FDA approved product label.
[..]
The United States alleges that AstraZeneca illegally marketed Seroquel for uses never approved by the FDA. Specifically, between January 2001 through December 2006, AstraZeneca promoted Seroquel to psychiatrists and other physicians for certain uses that were not approved by the FDA as safe and effective (including aggression, Alzheimer’s disease, anger management, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar maintenance, dementia, depression, mood disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and sleeplessness). These unapproved uses were not medically accepted indications for which the United States and the state Medicaid programs provided coverage for Seroquel.
According to the settlement agreement, AstraZeneca targeted its illegal marketing of the anti-psychotic Seroquel towards doctors who do not typically treat schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, such as physicians who treat the elderly, primary care physicians, pediatric and adolescent physicians, and in long-term care facilities and prisons.
[..]
The United States contends that AstraZeneca promoted the unapproved uses by improperly and unduly influencing the content of, and speakers, in company-sponsored continuing medical education programs. The company also engaged doctors to give promotional speaker programs on unapproved uses for Seroquel and to conduct studies on unapproved uses of Seroquel. In addition, the company recruited doctors to serve as authors of articles that were ghostwritten by medical literature companies and about studies the doctors in question did not conduct. AstraZeneca then used those studies and articles as the basis for promotional messages about unapproved uses of Seroquel.
"Illegal acts by pharmaceutical companies and false claims against Medicare and Medicaid can put the public health at risk, corrupt medical decisions by health care providers, and take billions of dollars directly out of taxpayers’ pockets," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "This Administration is committed to recovering taxpayer money lost to health care fraud, whether it’s by bringing cases against common criminals operating out of vacant storefronts or executives at some of the nation’s biggest companies."
The United States also contends that AstraZeneca violated the federal Anti-Kickback Statute by offering and paying illegal remuneration to doctors it recruited to serve as authors of articles written by AstraZeneca and its agents about the unapproved uses of Seroquel. AstraZeneca also offered and paid illegal remuneration to doctors to travel to resort locations to "advise" AstraZeneca about marketing messages for unapproved uses of Seroquel, and paid doctors to give promotional lectures to other health care professionals about unapproved and unaccepted uses of Seroquel. The United States contends that these payments were intended to induce the doctors to prescribe Seroquel for unapproved uses in violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute.
'
The takeaway is that anytime a physician prescribes you a drug, at the very least you have to check that there hasn't been a gigantic fine levied against the drug maker for illegally tricking your doctor into prescribing it to you.
It remains legal to provide drugs off-label because physicians sometimes know better than federal regulators
It's horrible that A-Z would illegally market drugs for off-label uses -- I would not disagree for a minute with your reasoning! -- but we retain this "escape hatch" because it is important to patient health
without the off-label "escape hatch," we would not have, for example, the glp-1 class of anti-obesity drugs, or, buproprion for smoking cessation, the most effective drug ever found in its area.
We needed doctors working firsthand with patients, and building "anecdotal" (i.e. case-based) evidence to learn things that really matter on a population level
There is no effect which is more long term than death. It is incredible to me that this is not obvious. But if you want other potential long term effects:
Lower bone mineral density, increased risk of fractures, osteoporosis
Sexual dysfunction / PSSD (Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction)
extra pyramidal symptoms (akathisia, Parkinsonism, dystonia, tardive dyskinesia)
I, like every other person who hasn't been living under a rock, am abundantly aware of corruption in Big Pharma and medicine. If my mother and I have both taken a given well-known medication for decades and found it effectively treated a condition that may be hereditary with no negative side effects, and my son is demonstrating symptoms similar to mine and my mother's, is it unreasonable to tolerate my son trying the same medication? That's a far cry from committing to forcing him to take the medication his whole life, or trying some mystery drug with which I have no familiarity.
My deepest views on this subject are personal, subjective, and more controversial. I have watched several family members take antidepressants for upwards of four decades, and I myself suffered terrible depression throughout my childhood and teenage years. Despite my depression, I always avoided antidepressants for some ineffable reason-- a hunch, a nebulous suspicion, I'm not sure what to call it. Somewhere in my mid twenties my depression lifted and never returned. I look back on my life, which has been filled with hardship, and I feel positively disposed to the suffering. The suffering made me who I am. I feel strongly that my character would be diminished had I not experienced it.
On the other hand, I watched family members take these drugs, and their lives seem somehow dulled-- filled with banal tragedy, like staying in a bad marriage, or not being particularly interested in their grandchildren. I have a theory that the drugs make palatable that which otherwise wouldn't be, hence they stay in the bad marriage, the bad job, and they watch their bad TV and eat their bad food and everything is fine. I've also seen one of them go off the drugs, and for a couple months they were a much more vibrant person. I saw them express joy. I feel a low grade rage toward the industry that I've been deprived of this version of them. I do entertain the possibility that I'm imagining it all. Maybe things really would have been worse without the drugs. But I am glad no one ever insisted, or even strongly advocated I take them myself.
To be clear, nobody ever insisted or strongly advocated that I take medication — suggested maybe, but it was entirely my decision. And I completely agree about the importance of hitting "rock bottom." That's something I struggle with as a parent: wanting to make sure my kids have plenty of opportunities to fail, yet fail in a way that isn't irreversibly damaging. If at rock bottom I had simply killed myself rather than starting Prozac I wouldn't be around to have benefited from it.
A large part of me dislikes being on any sort of medication long-term, and think most people have the same dislike. I have gone off of Prozac a few times and always found that I gradually became frustrated and depressed again, and as you said the reason for the dislike is ineffable, so I chose to go back on. I'm fortunate to have a life with no bad marriage, no bad job, and very little trauma at all, which is also unfortunate since it means despite years of therapy and introspection and travel and hobbies and other varied experiences I've never been able to find any cause for the depression and therefore no way to fix it, other than medication. It makes me think of Captain Picard: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life."
Medication does not remove the need for therapy. If they are stuck in a bad situation and do not have the tools to come out of it, then in therapy they can learn about the tools and techniques.
Medication avoids having that particular day where everything hits rock bottom and the only solution seems to be suicide.
For some people just therapy is not sufficient but need also medication.
Psychiatric illness is something where many people have misunderstandings. Since many people go through depressive episodes, they feel that their experience is the same as others who are facing chronic depression. And since it is not physically visible, it is also hard to empathize with.
No one says you can come out of heart disease or diabetes by just bearing it bravely. Somehow for psychiatric illness people assume that it is something that can be braved out.
How can you believe it's both "no better than placebo" but also that it's "going to have his brain chemistry altered and essentially be addicted to a drug". SSRIs are not considered addictive, though people can develop a dependence if it provides them significant improvement.
The whole point of the linked article is that the drug is no better at placebo at treating depression but also carries a host of known side effects, besides unknowns when it comes to long term use. They're not saying it's inert.
That's fair, though I never implied that there were no side effects. The part I was trying to point out in the quote was the mention of it being addictive which is not really supported, nor is that mentioned in the article.
Here’s a paper from last year: The nature and impact of antidepressant withdrawal symptoms and proposal of the Discriminatory Antidepressant Withdrawal Symptoms Scale (DAWSS) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadr.2024.100765
‘Highlights
•
Antidepressant withdrawal can be severe and protracted.
•
It produces characteristic physical and emotional symptoms.
•
All symptoms were more severe after stopping than before starting antidepressants.
•
We identified the 15 most discriminatory withdrawal symptoms in our sample.
•
Withdrawal did not differ between people with physical or mental health diagnoses.’
Mine too! Only 2 years old but I can already see the massive anxiety bursts in him.
If this guy has a non chemical cure, I'm all for it. In fact I'm actively researching children psychologists to stave off the meds as much as we can, the problem is that 99% of psychologists are quacks, so choosing them is tough.
There's only so many times a kid can get sent home from school for biting/kicking/punching before you realize you need some professional help and will do anything to help the poor kid. I wish you luck.
Afaict, these are all recurring subscriptions. Is there any reason not to signup for a month or two and then cancel, maybe repeat every couple years? The sub is more of a continuous monitoring thing?
I assume they wouldn't just "undo" their opt-outs?
I'd prefer a one-time payment over that darn subscription-recurring-revenue-model.
The month or two thing will work for some exposures, but the bummer reality is that these sites are terrible and the worst of them take persistence and escalation to remove, which can take some time.
(I've been working for one of the aforementioned—Kanary—for about a year now on this sort of thing.)
Re: undoing opt-outs, we do not do that, but data brokers will re-surface your information again if they find it elsewhere.
Adding my own personal experience with Incogni (owned by SurfShark); I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth as far as data brokers contacted automatically on my behalf (100+).
i've been reading HN for the last 4 years or so. over that time ive slowly gotten rid of social media; first by uninstalling apps, then by deleting accounts. Lately I decided to get rid of reddit, which had had a huge impact on my media consumption. I've found myself taking the time to read articles posted on here, and as such Ive found a few sites that I favor for content.
Early on I simply read comments if a site was blocked, then went to archives, and now i'm finding myself paying for sites I appreciate. I feel like this is an eventual outcome for many, but getting users to consume "long form" media is the trick. If it weren't for these free peaks at the content, I would never have come around to paying for it.
Maybe all these paywalled sites could start a subscription service where you pay one low monthly fee and get access to X sites with it.
Then every publisher that is a member of the subscription service gets an amount of money proportionate to the number of subscribers that read their articles.
Seems so obvious to me but maybe there’s a reason why it wouldn’t (or hasn’t) worked.
I use Zen on a newer Thinkpad T14, but I feel there is a difference. Applications like Firefox and Intellij feel snappier than with the standard Kernel.
I am the author of the Mumble library[1] used in OP's project. I've also contributed directly to the Mumble project a bit in the past.
It has been several years since I shut down my personal Mumble server. One of the reasons being that lots of my friends were using Discord and found opening Mumble an annoyance (being connected to multiple Mumble servers at once is not well supported, but being in multiple Discord "servers" is very common). The Mumble client also had a poor UX.
It would be great if Mumble had a web interface, support for multiple servers, and a better text chat interface, but I think it's too little too late to convince regular users to use Mumble.
I run a mumble server and I'm a holdout. Close friends know I won't go on Discord.
I had a thought the other day that it's interesting now that Discord has a strong user-base, they've really gone backwards in terms of what made them palatable in the first place. If I recall correctly, it used to be that you could send someone a Discord URL and they would be able to instantly join a call from it, no account needed, no app needed, no need to "join a server", just straight into a call. I suspect at some point their strategy moved away from growing the number of users, to now extracting value from existing users.
Hey, techietim thanks for the library. Sorry to hear you are not using mumble any more. The bridge has worked great for myself and my group over the last year. We definitely felt the presure to move to Discord before the bridge but now we just point people at our Discord server, which we call "Not Mumble" and everything works out great. If you every want to give MDB a try shoot me a message and would be more than happy to help. Although having read through the gumble library I'm sure you could fire it all up in no time. Thanks again.
I set up a mumble server at the beginning of the pandemic to talk to my friends. It quickly fell out of use for the same reasons you gave. Shame to see such high quality audio software give way to closed source alternatives
This is horrifying.