Why do you think people take antidepressants who are NOT chemically imbalanced?

Question

I have my own theories on this, but I'd like to hear from others.

Don't answer my question with a question like "how do YOU know...?" These drugs are prescribed every day for reasons other than depression. I want to see how much thought others have put into this.

Answer 1

If you do not have a chemical imbalance...but are just severely depressed...your problem is more than likely something emotional, situational or environmental so you should be talking to someone about these problems. However...if you ARE severely depressed therapy is NOT going to help you unless your mood is "stable." Hence, anti-depressants are prescribed. At this point you can go through the problems you are having, work on a better way of coping rather than just becoming a victim of depression and then stop relying on prescription drugs to heal your own personal demons.

The problem with this neat little scenerio is that NO ONE wants to confront the issues that are the underlying cause of their depression...they want a "quick fix" to make them feel NUMB. Not happy, not sad...but numb. They then do not seek a therapist to help them confront the real problems because the situation is temporarily "solved" by a tiny pill. Also...life is not perfect and it is largely to do with your outlook on life but if you are mulled down by other emotional traumas...then you are not going to have a good outlook on life.

Religion used to be the opiate of the masses...now it is prescription drugs.

Answer 2

Hmmm...I don't know. I've taken pretty much every antidepressant out there and nothing has helped my depression. It has been discovered though that my depression is not caused by chemical imbalance, but environment/situational. Therefore, I stopped taking them although my doctor wanted to prescribe them anyway. Maybe it's a money maker for the pharmaceutical companies.

Answer 3

Psychiatrists claim that a person “needs” a drug to combat their “chemical imbalance” in the brain which is causing a person’s “mental disorder.” However, the concept that a brain-based, chemical imbalance underlies mental illness is false. While popularized by heavy public marketing, it is simply psychiatric wishful thinking. As with all of psychiatry’s disease models, it has been thoroughly discredited by researchers.

Diabetes is a biochemical imbalance. However, as Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen states, “the definitive test and biochemical imbalance is a high blood sugar balance level. Treatment in severe cases is insulin injections, which restore sugar balance. The symptoms clear and retest shows the blood sugar is normal. Nothing like a sodium imbalance or blood sugar imbalance exists for depression or any other psychiatric syndrome.”

In 1996, psychiatrist David Kaiser said, “...modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness...Patients [have] been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and...there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.”

The U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health states: “The precise causes (etiology) of mental disorders are not known” and that “there is no definitive lesion, laboratory test, or abnormality in brain tissue that can identify the illness.”

Symptoms that psychiatry labels as mental illness, can stem from any number of variable sources. Many people, for example, have overcome "mental illness" through megavitamin therapy and effective nutrition. A growing wealth of evidence supports that underlying nutritional deficiencies can cause even the most severe mental disorders, including symptoms labelled as "schizophrenia" [See source refs]

1.Effective Mood Stabilization With a Chelated Mineral Supplement: An Open-Label Trial in Bipolar (Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 62:12, December 2001).

2.Commentary: Do Vitamins or Minerals (Apart From Lithium) Have Mood-Stabilizing Effects? (Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 62:933-935, December 2001).

3.Treatment of Mood Lability and Explosive Rage with Minerals and Vitamins: Two Case Studies in Children, (Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology Volume 12(3): 203-218, 2002).

4.Nutritional Approach to Bipolar Disorder, (Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 64:3, March 2003).

5.Improved Mood and Behavior During Treatment with a Mineral-Vitamin Supplement: An Open-Label Case Series of Children (Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, Volume 14, Number 1, 2004).

Answer 4

To get high- many antidepressants are setotonin reuptake inhibitors, and we all know that serotonin and dopamin are the feel-good chemicals of the brain.

Answer 5

chemical imbalance is a theory....whether or not anti-depressants are truly needed or not, one must consider the placebo effect....but truly, i am too depressed to think much about it

Answer 6

because there depressed and need something that will make them feel good again.. they're tired of always thinking about the bad things and they only thing they can think of taking is anti depressents...

Answer 7

The placebo effect.

Answer 8

I don't know but I wouldn't because they can
make you gain weight and have bad sexual side effects.

Answer 9

It's the "IN" thing to do these days.

Answer 10

how do YOU know if someone has an imbalance?