Posted by BrittPark on January 25, 2003, at 15:57:49
In reply to Re: medication without a prescription, posted by androog on January 25, 2003, at 15:07:34
> Does anyone know what the statistics are regarding the success rate of ALL the antidepressants as a group? By this I mean, if you had 100 people who suffered from major depression and treated them all with ALL the drugs marketed as antidepressants, what percentage of the group would show significant improvement?
This is a great question. I don't know of any study that speaks to it. My guess is that given enough time and drug trials, the response rate is 80-90%. I base this on what my psychiatrist, a superb psychopharmacologist, has told me. In his practice he's never, given enough time, not successfully treated a patient. That leaves out the people who leave his care. Now he may have been saying that to make me feel more hopeful at the time, but given his character I don't think so.
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> I'd also like to know, roughly, how many people who suffer from refractory major depression respond signigicantly to opiates.Another great question. I've never found a study even remotely likely to answer it. My guess is that a majority of people would respond well to opioids, based on the number of people I know who have found opioids pleasurable. This begs another question: what percentage of people get a continued AD effect from opioids? I would guess that the number is small because most people develop tolerance. I wish that the whole realm of opioids and psychiatry would get federal funding for research, but don't think I'll see it in my lifetime. The principle in psychiatric research seems to be that anything that makes "normal" people feel better cannot be considered.
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> I keep reading all of this good stuff about opiates, but surely there are people who have had no luck with, or even deteriorated from, opiates in the treatment of their depression.I'm sure there are many who've not been helped and even hurt by opioids. I'm not, of course, including the large number of people damaged by illicit opioids.
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> androog
Britt
poster:BrittPark
thread:81414
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030125/msgs/137513.html