To say the golden standard is useless without providing a better alternative.
I find this kind of messaging completely irresponsible and it just contributes to the stigma around mental health and medications.
I find this kind of messaging completely irresponsible and it just contributes to the stigma around mental health and medications.
The individualization of mental health problem misses that there are very likely systemic causes of depression.
I've gone through several severe periods of depression, and at the time it all seemed like something was wrong with me and this is the prevailing narrative. In retrospect all of these were caused by a very real external problem in my life that I didn't see (depressing job, emotionally abusive parents, unhealthy marriage etc).
I have no doubt that had I sought medication in any of these cases I would have been given it. But that would have prevented me from being forced to realize the very real problems in my life.
In a broader perspective there are plenty of wide spread social issues that are very likely legitimately causes depression. The idea of simply medicating this away is akin to simply giving Tylenol to someone who has a abscessed tooth. I'm horrified at the wide adoption of medications (often with adverse side effects) to mask what are very real and legitimate sources of depression.
A better alternative is to openly discuss and challenge the prevailing social issues leading to a mental health crisis.
Heck. Just watch how the treatment was portrait in a Hollywood blockbuster in the 1970s. There is no way One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would frame lobotomy so badly if it was consider a “golden standard”.
Comparing SSRI to lobotomy is a historic revisionism at best.
If you're cherry-picking negative examples that's the very definition of stigma.
I do disagree with your cherry-picking assessment, I am relaying my lived experience. The people I know of that take SSRIs are either in an unhealthy environment or are masking trauma. Or a bit of both.
And speaking from personal experience: I was never suicidal, more like burnt out and depressed. What helped me was an exceptional therapist that assisted me in making sense of what I am feeling and gently worked with me to build a framework to cope. That involved a spiritual component and helped me regain my creativity.
My point being: I can not imagine that SSRIs would have enabled me to do that. I am glad they helped your friends. Out of curiosity I would be interested in what they had going on at that time. I also do understand that this is deeply personal and none of my business.
If the golden standard were to hit yourself in the head with a hammer, it is very useful to point out that it doesn't seem to help and is not safe. Even if you don't have a better alternative.
This is a popular idea, and I have no idea where this corruption of the scientific process came from.
It's not true.
It is completely viable, legal, moral, and all the things to simply scientifically point at something and say "That doesn't work." No obligation to produce something that does work is incurred.
It’s not the responsibility of one study to resolve depression. That would be nice and convenient, but it’s a scientific community driven solution space exploration. And determining a path is ineffective leads to more time and money spent on alternate paths to find something which is effective.
If the "golden standard" is in fact the placebo effect, that's good to know.
Mental health is too important to leave to superstition.
You don't have to be a tailor with a ready new suit to point out that the Emperor is naked.