Are Anti-Depressants Worth It?

Depression and Bipolar DisorderMost of us who are Bipolar are on some strange cocktail of medicine that only a physician can truly understand. The mixtures are so complex and the side-effects are so bad that it is difficult to comprehend what medication does exactly what and even harder to determine which medicines to stay on and which to cut back on. I just read an article in the NYT about the effectiveness of the more popular anti-depressants on the market and you might be surprised about the results.

The latest news suggests that anti-depressants are more effective in cases of severe depression. This somewhat contradicts earlier studies that suggested that anti-depressants were no more effective than a placebo in a controlled study.

According to Dr. DeRubeis who was one of the researchers on the study, this means that people with moderate depression need to evaluate whether the side-effects are worth the benefits. He suggests exercise and informing yourself about depression as alternatives to just going directly for medicine.

Given the fact that more and more Americans lack health care and the sad fact that many psychiatric illnesses are not covered by health plans, this may be a strong wake up call for those of us struggling with mild depression to try other things instead of solely using drugs.

Please recognize that I am only referring to mild depression and not severe depression or Bipolar Disorder in general. I am not a doctor, but due to my own experiences, I am more hesitant to recommend going off all medication without close supervision from a doctor.

Just a few days ago, the NYT had a follow-up to an earlier series they did regarding real-life patients with a variety of disorders. They caught up with one writer with Bipolar Disorder who was finding that he missed the feelings of mania and was complaining that he lacked creativity as a side-effect of his “medicated personality”.  Unsurprisingly, his goal is to find balance, which seems to be a constant struggle for a majority of us who suffer from Bipolar Disorder.

In the past, I was severely depressed and needed more medication. Due to the fact that I am Bipolar I, my doctor had to very, very careful up the anti-depressant I was taking in case I had a manic episode. This is pretty much the crux for those of us with Bipolar Disorder.