it doesn't get to the root cause does it..... has anyone tried any anti depressents, do they help at all?

To my understanding, meds are there to treat your symptoms, to help you function better and think more clearly. If the depression is situational, then there's more work to be done.... usually in therapy.

Not everyone needs meds. It depends on the severity of your symptoms, and how much they interfere with your ability to function. I went for years without them. But I ended up in a very deep depression, and now I take them and they help quite a lot.

It has taken a little work to find the right combination of meds for me, but as long as you have a responsible doctor who you can trust you should be fine.

Hope this helps you. Are you thinking about taking some meds? If so, might I suggest also seeking out some form of therapy as well. Studys show that meds and therapy together get the best results.

Secret Keeper

Yes antidepressants often work very well (some have bad side-effects though). Certain supplements work very well too as deficiencies can cause low levels of seratonin among other things.

Do you understand that clinical depression, anxiety and a host of other issues are often chemically based? Your brain is a machine, you think with that machine. If the machine is not functioning properly your thoughts/feelings get distorted.

Anti-depressants work by adjusting certain chemicals in your brain, the most common are SSRI's (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) which act to keep Seratonin from being reabsorbed as many depressed people have low Seratonin levels. By increasing the amount of available Seratonin the mood is elevated, anxiety is reduced, etc... Some other antidepressants work on other neurotransmitters like Dopamine.

I started to wonder why so many on here that are desperate, hopeless, talking about suicide, etc...don't ever mention meds. I would expect that they would say "I am giving up, everything I have tried has failed, none of the meds work, etc..." but that rarely seems to come up. Maybe because a lot of posters have never tried to fix the problem?

Depression may have an initial cause but once it has been going on for a while it turns into a chemical problem. The brain scans of depressed people show their brain is phsyically functioning differently than normal people (certain areas of the brain are NOT being used the way a normal person's brain is). It is a PHYSICAL problem, and by fixing the chemical imbalance the brain returns to normal activity (and the brain scans show a normal pattern).

PET Scan Gallery brainzaps

this is what a friend of mine who is an intern told me...

he said that they found that happy people have more serotonin in their brain. so SSRI is invented! and now they found that noradrenaline has an effect to...so there's SNRI!

Purportedly there are biological and situational depressions; biological ones respond better to medication. However I am of the opinion that they are all useless, having tried about 20 different ones it wasn't until I'd changed the way I thought about things (which was freakin difficult by the way) that I felt any better.

yea meds definetly help. Without my meds I wouldn't be able to funcgtion

Same goes for me. I finally found the right combination of meds to improve my mood and get me back to work, and remain there.

So far so good...one day at a time.

Wow Leviathan, you and that PET scan stuff have been very helpful lately. lol!

I need me one of them brainzaps, if I still have a brain that is