Is your mental health medication actually working? | Hacker News Reader

Is your mental health medication actually working?

py4.ir

5 pointspy45 comments

Open articleView on HN

I read your post

Is Your Mental Health Medication Actually Working?

Please be clear.

There is no evidence that a chemical imbalance in the brain even exists.

The chemical imbalance hypothosis was created by big pharma to sell Prozac and society and the medical community fell for it.

https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/debunking-two-chemical...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/20/scientists-q...

I am a retired psychotherapist who wored in mental health for over 30 years and I have never found any research that supports the chemical imbalance theory

You are absolutely correct. The reason I used the term "chemical imbalance" was to simplify the matter. I just meant that I was thinking some of my problems have a chemical basis. As you mentioned, the hypothesis of "imbalanced" chemicals is not proven.

I would be curious to hear what you suggest should have been done differently.

You state "Nonetheless, clinicians should be more vocal about it", more vocal about what? That it is not always easy to tease out whether it's medication or lifestyle changes that improve your depression? How would that help?

Separately, you started and antidepressants and had an improvement in your depression. Could the antidepressant have given you the impetus to make the positive lifestyle changes you allude to?

Reply to #1: Many psychiatrists don't seem to be concerned about control variables. When I consulted with them, they would simply ask me how I was feeling and if I said I was feeling better, they would assume that the medication was working. They didn't try to figure out if the improvement was actually due to the medication or something else. In modern life, there are many factors that can affect our well-being, and it can be difficult to track them all. But it's important to always question whether the improvement we experience from medication is actually due to the medication itself or something else in our lives. That's what I'm suggesting.

Reply to #2: That is possible but intuitively I would say the problems those addictions created for me were my main motif for doing lifestyle changes.

I guess I don't see the point of your psychiatrist trying to do an n of 1 study on you. Imagine that you has a pnemonia/cancer/whatever that was in remission halfway through treatment with antibiotics/chemotherapy/whatever. Would you want the doctor to stop the med just to make sure that it was the med that helping? What happens if your pneumonia/cancer/depression comes back and you suffer serious consequences? Put simply "if it ain't broke don't fix it". There is nothing to be gained from a n of 1 study aside from satisfying your intellectual curiosity.

Of course these studies should be done, but through a scientific trial, where the risk of remission can be balanced with potential gains to scientific knowledge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com