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Comment by Broken_Hippo | Hacker News Reader

" it is often the first step people take to actually better their life."

What makes you think this - and what makes you think that so many folks have so much agency in their life? A lot of folks don't, and if you have depression, you generally have even less of it because you wind up with an inability to see options you do have... if any.

It isn't like everyone can escape poverty or a bad spouse (it takes money to divorce someone or even leave if you need to get your own place). It isn't like anyone can magically make a disease diagnosis go away nor does changing jobs always fix things, especially if the reason you stay is because you desperately need the health insurance or because no where else pays as much in your area (and moving costs money).

We don't make sure folks have tools to improve their life.

Additionally, this really just blames the victim and I really hope you don't say this to folks actually suffering.

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I 100% agree with your post but i’d like to add something about this :

> It isn't like everyone can escape poverty or a bad spouse

You are right and medicalization is useful to overcome this. But there is a real risk, as a society, that we find it normal to treat the depression induced by those issues, rather than the issues themselves. We should treat poverty and work towards making divorce less painful rather than thinking medication allows a status-quo.

But that’s another topic on its own and absolutely not a counter argument of your answer.

Poverty and spousal abuse aren't actually statistically significant causes for depression.

You seem to labor under the fallacy to think that anti-depressants are some kind of lifestyle drugs that generally improve mood or tolerance of adversity. They don't.

> You seem to labor under the fallacy to think that anti-depressants are some kind of lifestyle drugs that generally improve mood or tolerance of adversity. They don't.

I absolutely don’t see where I wrote that. I exactly know what anti-depressant are and are not. I’m currently taking them (though that’s for chronic anxiety).

So I absolutely know that they don’t improve mood or tolerance of adversity. They « just » flatten the emotional curve, I don’t see how having flat emotions (even the good ones) are some sort of enjoyable « lifestyle ». But it does allow me to work on my anxiety issues without being submerged by ridiculously amplified anxiety.

You are probally right on chemicals that treat depression.

I couldn't find the original Psychologist who decided to use The Freedom of Information Act to procure All the studies concerning the efficy of Antidepressant drugs.

He collated the all the clinical studies, and not just the cherry picked ones.

What he found puckered a few Psychiatrists arses, but they still prescribe like it's the end of the world, and rake in a very comfortable income.

I can't remember the guy's name, but this study might suffice.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antidepressants-d...

I think you might mean this?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/

Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect

Abstract

Antidepressants are supposed to work by fixing a chemical imbalance, specifically, a lack of serotonin in the brain. Indeed, their supposed effectiveness is the primary evidence for the chemical imbalance theory. But analyses of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits are due to the placebo effect. Some antidepressants increase serotonin levels, some decrease it, and some have no effect at all on serotonin. Nevertheless, they all show the same therapeutic benefit. Even the small statistical difference between antidepressants and placebos may be an enhanced placebo effect, due to the fact that most patients and doctors in clinical trials successfully break blind. The serotonin theory is as close as any theory in the history of science to having been proved wrong. Instead of curing depression, popular antidepressants may induce a biological vulnerability making people more likely to become depressed in the future.

Is medication actually effective at treating depression, though? At least 4/5ths of the effect is known to be placebo, and there's a compelling argument that perhaps it's all placebo:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/

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