Turns out a sedated and anaesthetized and gaslit population is less likely to meaningfully revolt against the structure that oppresses it, who would have guessed!
Even better, the sedatives and anaesthetics cause dependency, so they’ll keep paying for more, and they often cause numerous other deletorious health conditions, which they’ll need to pay even more to deal with those side effects!
And they’ll now also be too physically unhealthy, as well as physically and mentally dependent, and too mentally precarious to do anything other than shrivel up, whimper and die, or maybe go berserk, when industrial civilization collapses and no one can get their meds any more!
The truth is researchers and doctors don’t actually know how effective antidepressants are or why certain types work only for certain people. But recent advances in genomics and personalized medicine are bringing us closer to a better understanding.
New research, reviewing huge bodies of scientific evidence, found no direct link between serotonin and depression.
The authors find “no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression or that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”
Fuckin’ whoops, turns out SSRIs don’t actually treat depression at all, meaning we’ve been giving tens, hundreds? of millions of people uneccessary medical complications in the form of side effects, and any reported mental health improvements were actually from the placebo effect!
In fact, we’re still somehow legally allowed to say:
Antidepressants, including SSRIs, remain an effective treatment. We just need to better understand why and how they work.
Even tbough the fundamental ‘chemical imbalance’ hypothesis that SSRIs are built on has been shown to be bunk!
But its ok, see, here’s our ‘current best evidence’, that SSRIs are indeed an effective treatment, from our article written in 2022.
What, healthcare in this country being useless and they still charge a shitton for it and push for the treatments even tho it may not be necessary or even beneficial in any way!? No way!!!
As someone untreated (and shut-in), the grass isn’t green here either. I don’t know what the here-and-now alternative is, especially as a well-understood and very-effective med that can be taken irregularly is probably an exception rather than the norm (esp. for something serious/underlying).
If somebody finds a combo of meds that makes them more-than-somewhat functional I think that’s great, I don’t care how you try to frame it. I’m probably not surviving any sort of collapse either, not that I’d even want to. (someone on meds might do better if they can taper off)
I take more issue with the cost and hoops of the US health-insurance system (+other stuff like transportation). It’s a failure even by “pick two” standards… if it’s “you try this first” or 4 appointments for testing/specialists before one step is made it would be much better if bureaucracy weren’t also an issue.
Specifically with the gov’t imploding now (and the impending rug pull) I’m not sure what I could ever do unless there was a real chance someone will let me be a test subject for physical brain preservation (and they’d move my brain some other not-imploding country).
Unironically, I’d love to see a sourced meta study from ideally the last 3 years that concludes that, which is based on long-term studies, which were properly peer reviewed, and not funded by the drug manufacturers themselves.
Sure, this one probably comes closest to what you’re looking for. Looks like modest benefit. Nothing super effective but enough to make a positive difference generally. I definitely recognize that they can have side effects, so decisions should be personalized.
At least in the first study, they did an analysis of the non-pharm funded studies and saw some good results. Unfortunately that’s pretty much the best we can go off of.
Turns out a sedated and anaesthetized and gaslit population is less likely to meaningfully revolt against the structure that oppresses it, who would have guessed!
Even better, the sedatives and anaesthetics cause dependency, so they’ll keep paying for more, and they often cause numerous other deletorious health conditions, which they’ll need to pay even more to deal with those side effects!
And they’ll now also be too physically unhealthy, as well as physically and mentally dependent, and too mentally precarious to do anything other than shrivel up, whimper and die, or maybe go berserk, when industrial civilization collapses and no one can get their meds any more!
https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/women-health/just-how-effective-are-antidepressants-anyway-why-dont-certain-ones-work-for-me/
We don’t even know how these things work!
Or why they seem to for some but not others!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202207/serotonin-imbalance-found-not-be-linked-depression
Fuckin’ whoops, turns out SSRIs don’t actually treat depression at all, meaning we’ve been giving tens, hundreds? of millions of people uneccessary medical complications in the form of side effects, and any reported mental health improvements were actually from the placebo effect!
In fact, we’re still somehow legally allowed to say:
Even tbough the fundamental ‘chemical imbalance’ hypothesis that SSRIs are built on has been shown to be bunk!
But its ok, see, here’s our ‘current best evidence’, that SSRIs are indeed an effective treatment, from our article written in 2022.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD007954/DEPRESSN_antidepressants-versus-placebo-for-depression-in-primary-care
Yep, that’s right, its a study from 2009!
Which outright statea in the abstract:
See! All fine.
Keep taking your pills.
Withdrawal can be very dangerous.
What, healthcare in this country being useless and they still charge a shitton for it and push for the treatments even tho it may not be necessary or even beneficial in any way!? No way!!!
As someone untreated (and shut-in), the grass isn’t green here either. I don’t know what the here-and-now alternative is, especially as a well-understood and very-effective med that can be taken irregularly is probably an exception rather than the norm (esp. for something serious/underlying).
If somebody finds a combo of meds that makes them more-than-somewhat functional I think that’s great, I don’t care how you try to frame it. I’m probably not surviving any sort of collapse either, not that I’d even want to. (someone on meds might do better if they can taper off)
I take more issue with the cost and hoops of the US health-insurance system (+other stuff like transportation). It’s a failure even by “pick two” standards… if it’s “you try this first” or 4 appointments for testing/specialists before one step is made it would be much better if bureaucracy weren’t also an issue.
Specifically with the gov’t imploding now (and the impending rug pull) I’m not sure what I could ever do unless there was a real chance someone will let me be a test subject for physical brain preservation (and they’d move my brain some other not-imploding country).
SSRIs seem to work better than placebo on average
Unironically, I’d love to see a sourced meta study from ideally the last 3 years that concludes that, which is based on long-term studies, which were properly peer reviewed, and not funded by the drug manufacturers themselves.
Sure, this one probably comes closest to what you’re looking for. Looks like modest benefit. Nothing super effective but enough to make a positive difference generally. I definitely recognize that they can have side effects, so decisions should be personalized.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.13541
There are some other older ones done before 2022 as well like this one.
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.focus.16407
For this one:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.13541
Going into the actual paper…
10 low bias studies, 2935 subjects.
12 high bias studies, 3547 subjects.
24 unclear bias studies, 9689 subjects.
Cool, so the vast majority of analyzed subjects were not from studies that could be established as having a low bias.
Oh hey, remember when I asked for a meta study that didn’t include studies done by or funded by drug manufacturers?
Ok, so you obviously either did not read what I asked for, or you didn’t read the paper.
Further, I said long-term, only 7 of the 42 studies are about maintenence stage, you know, long term.
And…
Wow! Amazing!
This study does not even kind of come close to the conditions I specifically laid out.
… Onto study number 2.
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.focus.16407
Cool, 18% of the studied trials were low bias this time, roughly in line with the other meta study.
Awesome.
At least in the first study, they did an analysis of the non-pharm funded studies and saw some good results. Unfortunately that’s pretty much the best we can go off of.