Posted by Shirley on October 28, 2000, at 11:33:41
In reply to Re: 3Day to 2 Week Responses. Proof, not myth. » JohnL, posted by Cam W. on October 28, 2000, at 10:53:08
Cam,
I have tremendous respect for you and have always found your posts to be informative. But I have a different perspective.
Regarding the placebo effect, my psychiatrist specifically said that in his experiences, the patients who responded very rapidly to medication was not the result of a placebo effect because they continued to feel well after 3 days. He felt if it had been a placebo effect, they would have stopped feeling well.
Regarding the patients you mentioned who suddenly did better after being on a medicine for a long time, are there statistics regarding those situations? I'm curious because my psychiatrist also said that people who respond quickly to medications are usually going to have the best response. This conversation came up under another situation and I have never mentioned Dr. Jensen.
Other thoughts - I understand why you're skeptical of Dr. Jensen's work. But you're assuming that the mainstream medical profession is always right. Wasn't it only a few years ago that alot of psychiatrists were saying that withdrawal symptoms from anti depressants didn't exist when we now unfortunately know that it's not the case.
I can't prove that Dr. Jensen is correct because I don't have medical knowledge and expertise to back up what I say. But I can tell you from personal experience that if I had waited a long time for a drug to take affect that was showing no signs of helping, I would have missed an awful lot of work besides having alot of heartache. I just think it's very unreasonable to ask a patient to stay on a drug longer than a week or two if it shows no sign of being helpful and the side effects are intolerable. With all the medicines to choose from, I don't think that's instant gratification, I think that's common sense. Of course, I realize there may be exceptions to this and you certain would know more about this than I do.
Even if these studies were funded by the companies that made the drugs, because of my psychiatrist's statement and Dr. Jensen's work, I think it is very possible that there are drugs that cause quick responses. As I said to John in my response, shouldn't you and other folks in the medical community be focusing on finding valid methods that would be able to pinpoint drugs that would work quicker? Even if you think Dr. Jensen's method is invalid and the studies that John presented are flawed because they were funded by the drug companies (which I would agree with by the way), there are still enough evidence of drugs working quickly that warrants further investigation.
In summary, I am not asking you to endorse Dr. Jensen but to keep an open mind.
Shirley
poster:Shirley
thread:47596
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20001022/msgs/47606.html