All things well

Research reported in The Guardian and elsewhere gives the surprising news that Prozac and similar commonly prescribed anti-depressants DON’T WORK!

Actually that is not true. They do work, but are no more effective than sugar pills (placebo), with the small exception of severely depressed people (and in these cases it is probably because the placebo is less effective rather than because the drugs actually work). The research comes from new analysis of the data obtained by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Thanks to Freedom of Information laws in the US, an international team of scientists were able to obtain the results of trials conducted by the drug manufacturers but which they chose not to publish (I wonder why!).

More than 40 million people world-wide use Prozac. Other drugs in this class (equally ineffective) are also used by millions, at great financial cost to over-stretched health services.

So now that it no longer makes sense to take these ‘uppers’ when we are down, what other strategies can we use?

• First – since the research shows that sugar pills are equally effective – we could use the time-honoured formula of comfort-eating. Large quantities of chocolate, biscuits, candies etc can be effective. However this can have serious side effects – such as putting on weight – leading to a need to buy bigger clothes. Which leads to option no. 2:
• Retail therapy. Be honest, how many of us hit the shops when we are down. How many things have we bought in that state which we don’t really need? I sometimes wonder how much of the western world’s economy is powered by slightly depressed people buying things to make them feel better. OK, so ‘retail therapy’ not only relieves the symptoms of depression, but may also help avoid an economic depression. But unless you are one of the lucky few to have pots of money, it can lead to another serious side-effect. Insolvency. And that can be a further cause for depression by itself.
• Dealing with the issues. Let’s face it – the two strategies above are just ways of putting our head in the sand, distracting ourselves so we don’t have to face up to whatever it is that it making us feel bad. Prozac can be just another way of avoiding our issues. To really get free of depression we need to go to the root of why we are depressed. It may be some past trauma which has let our brains to be wired a certain way so that we get into negative thought patterns. There are a variety of tools for uncovering and healing these issues – counselling, psychotherapy, Gestalt etc. We have found The Journey to be tremendously effective, in ourselves and others. I’ve seen cases where people who have suffered depression for years can become totally free just from one or two Journey processes.

Having said all this, I don’t rule out the use of drugs in some severe cases. Depression manifests in a different brain chemistry to that of non-depressed people. The jury is still out on which comes first. Does depression cause abnormal brain chemistry? Yes! Does abnormal brain chemistry cause depression? Yes! There may be genetic factors or environmental chemical factors which lead some people to have brain-chemical imbalance. In severe cases it is impossible (or very hard) to address the psychological issues without first bringing some balance to the brain chemistry.

The great news is that these are relatively few cases. For most of us who feel depressed from time to time (a surprisingly high percentage of people) the answers are out there.

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