Posted by law663 on November 25, 2005, at 17:25:22
In reply to Re: Studies on long term use of SSRI's, posted by med_empowered on November 25, 2005, at 17:18:23
I have one bone to pick with this: I know that Healy and others have claimed that AD's haven't shown much superiority to placebo. This is simply factly incorrect. They don't present the data honestly. AD's have shown superiority to placebo -- they work -- that's why people take them. The issue, in my mind, is that no one is doing long-term studies b/c the drug companies will not fund these studies and NIH seems unwilling to as well.
> its strange, really; the manufacturer studies for SSRIs and other antidepressant usually ran about 8 weeks. Shrinks were then using this data (in which the pills didn't come up much better than Placebo, btw) to recommend taking antidepressants for several months...now, the recommendation seems to be *keep taking it* indefinitely to avoid risking "relapse" (or withdrawal symptoms, I think). Its pretty scary. On the plus side...patient compliance with this kind of medication tends to be pretty low, especially over the long haul, so...since people quit taking them so much, there may not be as many long-term side effects popping up as with, say, the old neuroleptics, when people started to pay attention to those side effects around the 70s (I imagine forced drugging and depot injections made discontinuing those meds nearly impossible for a lot of people).
poster:law663
thread:582087
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051119/msgs/582170.html