Side Effects are What Let Patients Know Antidepressants are “Working”

The Epidemic of Mental Illness — Why?

By Dr. Mercola

If reading the news and watching TV advertisements for psychotropic drugs makes you wonder if Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, you’re not alone.

Mental Illness Not the Result of Chemical Imbalance

Most of you have probably heard that depression is caused by too little serotonin in your brain, which antidepressants are designed to correct. Likewise, schizophrenia is said to be related to too much dopamine, which other psychiatric drugs help lower. Unfortunately for anyone who has ever swallowed these marketing ploys, this is actually NOT a scientific statement.

Instead, these explanations for the “causes” of mental illness were created only after the drugs were found to have these effects.

Psychiatric Drugs Making Mental Illness Worse?

Something has changed in the field of diagnosing and treating psychiatric disorders in the last few decades, and that something has led to a 600 percent increase in persons on government (Social Security) disability due to mental illness!

According to Whitaker, it used to be that depression was typically a self-limiting illness. Even in cases severe enough to require hospitalization, people would get better in six or eight months; they would recover and often never relapse, or if they did it would be years down the road and, again, self-limiting.

When antidepressants were introduced, it was with the intent that they would help people recover from depression more quickly. Unfortunately, what we’re now seeing, and have been seeing since antidepressants were introduced, is patients recovering faster but relapsing more, or recovering only partially and transitioning into a festering state of chronic depression that never really resolves.

Long-term studies now indicate that of people with major depression, only about 15 percent that are treated with an antidepressant go into remission and stay well for a long period of time. The remaining 85 percent start having continuing relapses and become chronically depressed.

Are Psychiatric Drugs Making Mental Illness Worse?

Something has changed in the field of diagnosing and treating psychiatric disorders in the last few decades, and that something has led to a 600 percent increase in persons on government (Social Security) disability due to mental illness!

According to Whitaker, it used to be that depression was typically a self-limiting illness. Even in cases severe enough to require hospitalization, people would get better in six or eight months; they would recover and often never relapse, or if they did it would be years down the road and, again, self-limiting.

When antidepressants were introduced, it was with the intent that they would help people recover from depression more quickly. Unfortunately, what we’re now seeing, and have been seeing since antidepressants were introduced, is patients recovering faster but relapsing more, or recovering only partially and transitioning into a festering state of chronic depression that never really resolves.

Long-term studies now indicate that of people with major depression, only about 15 percent that are treated with an antidepressant go into remission and stay well for a long period of time. The remaining 85 percent start having continuing relapses and become chronically depressed.

Side Effects are What Let Patients Know Antidepressants are “Working”

Every year, 230 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled, making them one of the most-prescribed drugs in the United States. Despite all of these prescription drugs being taken, more than one in 20 Americans are depressed, according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The statistics alone should be a strong indication that treatment with antidepressants simply is not working, but the research bears this out also.

Studies have confirmed that antidepressant drugs are no more effective than sugar pills. Some studies have even found that sugar pills may produce BETTER results than antidepressants!

Personally, I believe the reason for this astounding finding is that both pills work via the placebo effect, but the sugar pills produce far fewer adverse effects, however research by Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Hull in the UK, and colleagues presents another interesting theory — that the side effects produced by antidepressants are the reason why they are sometimes perceived to work better.

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