Posted by River1924 on March 10, 2007, at 17:13:41
In reply to Re: Atypical depression, posted by Ines on March 2, 2007, at 8:01:15
I wrote this letter to John Davidson (UW-Madison (Wisconsin, USA.) He heads psychiatric research.
"I simply wish to raise an issue with the studies listed on your site. It seems as you are vetting out a large number of people with mental health problems. Atypical depression is the largest group of defined depressives. (Off the top of my head, I'd prefer conflicting contiguous ambiguous distressing mood states.) For example, I recall feeling depressed at age 11, and made a suicide attempt at 19. Many many people are in the same boat but your studies only allow those with no diagnosis and/or off meds. This favors those with melancholic or situational depression. I can't imagine anyone with my type of depression, which turns suicidal 10 days off an SSRI ever being in a placebo controlled medication study. How could someone with severe early onset depression not get some kind of diagnosis early on? This kind of depression is terminal. To use a "real" disease as an analogy, does skin cancer research recruit only those with mild squamous cell carcinoma or not allow those with skin cancer to participate? It seems as if the study models and precision have become more important than people with imprecise but serious non-psychotic mental illness."
poster:River1924
thread:737405
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070308/msgs/739949.html