Posted by Adam on September 5, 1999, at 8:59:05
In reply to Re: Selegiline for depression?, posted by Kim on September 5, 1999, at 2:40:18
> Adam,
> Don't give up! All I want from an antidepressant right now is for it to give me the strength to fight. As long as you can find it in yourself to keep up the battle, you have to think the selegiline is helping. And you're helping the rest of us who just can't manage yet to think that maybe there is something out there that will help. After 35+ different medications, I need to believe that.
> KimHi, Kim,
More thoughts:
I honestly don't know if selegiline is helping me, or if I'm even on it at the moment. Either way, I have made a decision
not to wait for it to "kick in" before I try to feel better. Or maybe I'm deluding myself, and this inner strength and resolve
is a function of the drug. At any rate, I am struck again and again by the potency of the placebo effect in antidepressant
studies. There is no reason to believe that antidepressants do nothing, but there is plenty of reason to believe that in even
very severe cases, nothing works just as well. The recent hype over Merk's substance P reuptake inhibitor and the subsequent
letdown (and steep decline in Merk's stock!) when it turned out that the drug was not significantly better than placebo. There
is a great article in the April 9th issue of Science, I believe, discussing many issues surrounding the substance P dissapointment.What I take from this is that mere belief that you will get better can be enormously helpful. Where and upon what we place that
belief may be extremely important. I think many of the claims made about the efficacy of antidepressants are overblown, while
the significance of "placebo" is often downplayed or ignored. It should not be. It just may be that within every person is
something at least as powerful as Prozac and the key is to access that factor. You may not think you've got it in you, but
chances are you do.
poster:Adam
thread:5905
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991001/msgs/11039.html