Posted by Psychquackery on August 25, 2003, at 17:18:44
Ive been depressed for almost six years now and dealing with psychiatry for the same amount of time. Ive had a particularly severe form of depression during this period. I dont have dysthymia, I dont have "housewife" depression or "woody allen" depression. I have the real thing.
Whether its been severe melancholia (I was almost catatonic at one point early in my depression) or a psychotic depression Im not sure. But its been bad...really really bad. Ive tried every single drug there is including MAOIs and was in the rTMS clinical trials.
Then in the last year or so I begin reading all this stuff about how they are finding that those patients with high blood cortisol levels frequently are poor responders to antidepressants. And I read the ECT literature...the ECT docs really do seem to understand severe depression. I guess they would as they are the ones who probably deal with the most severely depressed people. And all the literature Ive read says that currently available antidepressants are just not effective for certain subtypes of depression.
There are efforts to overcome this. Certain researchers claim that the anti-cortisol abortion drug RU-486 is effective for the most severe form of depression. And of course ECT is effective for it, but obviously that is not palatable for most it seems. I have come to the conclusion that psychiatry is pulling the wool over a lot of people's eyes. Sure, if you have dysthymia or some kind of mild depression a little prozac will fix you up. But what about the people who have the real thing? I dont think psychiatry is as good at fixing severe depression as they'd like us to know.
I think psychiatry is largely quackery and I dont think psychiatry is focused primarily on the severest mental disorders. Whereas it should be.
Igor
poster:Psychquackery
thread:253991
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030823/msgs/253991.html