Originally posted by Advantage
To the above posters.. these medications are dangerous.. specifically when mental illness isnt properly diagnosed and psychiatric meds are handed out by general practitioners, pediatricians, etc.. and prescribed by a little booklet given to them by the pharmaceutical co. There is a HUGE problem with actually diagnosing mental illness by physicians who ARE NOT qualified to do so.

This CAN be accurate as well. But, for a poster to say, "these drugs are terrible!" is nonsense and incomplete. It's a blanket statement. If someone is prescribed anti psychotics, there is usually a good reason. People tend to forget that hundreds of massive facilities in the early to mid 1900's permanently housed these patients who were deemed "incurable". It's not like these new age drugs have developed murderers (this was the link brought up by the OP).
With that said, I do agree that mental illness drugs can be too easily prescribed, especially with continuing patients.

Well, if what one wants is a consumeristic society shallow enough to buy all the crap out there, shallow enough to be enthralled by shiny tech toys and flavor-of-the-month pop-music, then one is pretty limited in mental health options. Can't have real treatments that result in enlightened people...an enlightened society doesn't buy enough junk food and useless crap... and can't be as easily manipulated...

This is absolutely wrong.

Our government can be technically classified as left national socialists since they believe that majorly
share owned government services are in the best interest of not only the corporation, but society
as well and should act in the best interest of the corporation.

They have over-extended not only their time in government posts, but their terms and
their definition of humanity.

Man must be in balance with other men and policies regarding their existence or he must be completely
free and that of course would be chaotic as you might have seen in the movie "We Live In Public" where
the CIA and internet mogul CEO Josh Harris of Pseudo.com had collaborated in designing an underground
society underneath Manhattan where individuals lived in an Ayn-Rand like society.

Correlation DOES NOT equal CAUSALITY! Don't confuse the two! Unstable people just happen to be on SSRI when they commit their atrocities. Look at the MILLIONS of other people who are on SSRI and don't harm anyone. In fact SSRI have been known for a long time to not just control the hell that mood disorders place people in, but also have a neurogenerative effect on their brains. The more you use SSRI, the more neurones and white matter you grow in your brain. Latest research is even indicating that long term use of SSRIs PROTECT people from cognitive impairment disorders like alzheimers and other forms of dementias. Do your homework before you make bland, nebulous statements..

Originally posted by aaronez
Correlation DOES NOT equal CAUSALITY! Don't confuse the two! Unstable people just happen to be on SSRI when they commit their atrocities. Look at the MILLIONS of other people who are on SSRI and don't harm anyone. In fact SSRI have been known for a long time to not just control the hell that mood disorders place people in, but also have a neurogenerative effect on their brains. The more you use SSRI, the more neurones and white matter you grow in your brain. Latest research is even indicating that long term use of SSRIs PROTECT people from cognitive impairment disorders like alzheimers and other forms of dementias. Do your homework before you make bland, nebulous statements..

"Correlation DOES NOT equal CAUSALITY! Don't confuse the two! Unstable people just happen to be using guns when they commit their atrocities. Look at the MILLIONS of other people who are using guns and don't harm anyone. "

There, I fixed it for you.....sounds logical now doesn't it?

Yeah, these drugs are terrible. I wanted to quit smoking, as a previous poster claimed, and received a prescription from my doctor. I have no recollection of the name of the drug but it turned me into a sobbing mess.

I’ve always been a happy person and very positive about most things but after taking that drug for a week I actually had feelings of suicide. I would burst into tears about all manner of things. It made me super critical of my life, in a false sense.

I would sit on my knees and cry for hours and not have any real idea of what I was upset about. You can have an introspective nightmare on shrooms or acid but this was deeper, it was absolute hopelessness.

Still smoking….

Originally posted by Krakatoa

Originally posted by aaronez
Correlation DOES NOT equal CAUSALITY! Don't confuse the two! Unstable people just happen to be on SSRI when they commit their atrocities. Look at the MILLIONS of other people who are on SSRI and don't harm anyone. In fact SSRI have been known for a long time to not just control the hell that mood disorders place people in, but also have a neurogenerative effect on their brains. The more you use SSRI, the more neurones and white matter you grow in your brain. Latest research is even indicating that long term use of SSRIs PROTECT people from cognitive impairment disorders like alzheimers and other forms of dementias. Do your homework before you make bland, nebulous statements..

"Correlation DOES NOT equal CAUSALITY! Don't confuse the two! Unstable people just happen to be using guns when they commit their atrocities. Look at the MILLIONS of other people who are using guns and don't harm anyone. "

There, I fixed it for you.....sounds logical now doesn't it?

One more correction: correlation does not IMPLY CAUSATION.
The phrase is used in stats and science.. and I think someone flunked it.

Okay, at the risk of anyone thinking I'm a basket case, I'll share my own experience with taking SSRI's.

In college, it was ridiculously easy to get on Prozac which was the new hot drug to cheer depressed messes like myself up. After about 15 minutes with the Psychiatrist, I was given some samples (poor students always got a 2 week supply) and I was off on Prozac. I was praying it would turn my life around because at what should have been the high point if my life,I was depressed, numb a lot and saw little hope for the future or point to it all.

I did feel weird initially but that passed after a couple days. I NEVER would harm someone or animals, nor have I ever had even an inkling of such behavior or thoughts occupy me. Suicide, however, was something I attempted twice over the years and even now - in my 40's and free of any meds - it still occasionally creeps up on me but more in a "I things get really bad" type option. In other words, having faced the prospect so many times before, if it came down to it, I certainly would have no problem offing myself to avoid some oppressive world NWO Fema Camp fate, whereas many regular people would endure it. But thats not really my point and sounds wacko-esque.

The point I do want to make - and one I have been very vocal about to friends and even my Doctors over the years - was that I have been on pretty much every psycho active substance legally prescribed in ths country at one point or another during my life as a clinically depressed and later bi-polar 2 Dx. And every single time, I was placed on these life altering - and mind altering by design - medications with no more than a 30 minute session with a psychiatrist (usually more like 15 minutes) that I see maybe once every 6 months, sometimes twice in a 6 month period. This is NOT the psychologist you see every week that at least gets to know you over time and what you feel and think. The prescribing pshrink was also usually a resident because I distinctly remember pretty much every time them excusing themselves to consult with the "actual" Doctor to approve what he or she thought would make it all better.

I'm not at all saying a blanket "these drugs are bad" as I do feel they helped during some of my worst phases. But there were a LOT of side effects, and the problem also arises in knowing when you may not need them any longer, the withdrawal issues if you stop taking them suddenly, and so on. I was never sure if the times I felt bad or weird on unreal were me, the meds, not as bad because of the meds, or worse because of them - there's no way to really know. And as they often stated "we don't really understand how these work" - sure, the inhibit the re-uptake of Seratonin but they don't really understand much more than that. And they barely know you or what you think, feel, experience, etc apart from a 15-30 minute checklist.

The way physiatry is practiced in the US currently for the general population is a joke, and not a funny one. And lest anyone think I was on some state funded free clinic schedule, not at all. I had a pretty decent job in IT and actually was seen in the System of which my hospital was a part (ie I worked in IT at a large Medical Hospital, but the Psychiatric Facility was part of our Health System). Now my issue was primarily depression, and I was never labelled as dangerous or abnormally crazy (as we're all a little insane these days), and my insurance covered most everything but a small copay for each appt.

So in summary, my point is that Doctors - probably most of whom really want to help people suffering from things that often aren't even a "real" problem but seem overwhelming because your brain doesn't work quite like it should - make the decisions to put you on a medication that changes your brain chemistry and thus your life from talking to you 15 minutes every 6 months. How any of these doctors could recognize someone who might be a danger to others or themselves - and whether the meds affect this in any appreciable way - is just not possible for a stranger to determine in such a brief interaction, nor whether these meds affect you in any dangerous way unless you happen to spell it out to them. It's not any surprise to me that so many people wind up offing themselves. It's not like the world s a very supportive or hopeful place - and the fact that Doctor who is oftentimes someone's last hope is a rush you in, rush you out with pills and little to no follow up is a dangerous symptom of a much larger issue.