Celexa, Prozac, ect... most don't seem to work. I am a psych nurse and the md.s cont?

Question

doctors cont to order them anyway. From my own personal experience, the drug that seems to "make" people happy are pain relievers... why don't they experiment with these?

Answer 1

Because pain killers are usually narcotic, very addictive and very hard on the liver long term.

Answer 2

The reason that doctors keep writing prescriptions for antidepressants is obvious.

The last time I walked into my psychiatrist's office, there were Paxil notepads, Zoloft calendars, Celexa coffee cups, Wellbutrin tissue boxes.

Let's face it, without all the antidepressant paraphenalia, the doctor's office would be completely empty. We would have to sit down on the bare floor, and my shrink would have to write a prescription using his finger.

Well, let me mention a few other issues. It was my impression that SSRIs and other newer antidepressants did work for people with relatively simple cases of mild to moderate depression and anxiety. However, these meds are not very helpful for more chronic & severe forms of depression and other psych disorders. That's where these meds fail to work. At least that's what I hear in the popular media. I don't know what you observed working as a psych nurse.

I suffer from major depression and attend a support group for folks with depression and bipolar disorder, plus a few folks with different diagnoses attend. I know a few people who are prescribed short-acting benzos like xanax & ativan. These folks sometimes get a buzz from these meds. Yes, they can be addictive if used daily, but they are not as dangerous as hard-core pain killers.

I fall into the treatment resistant group for depression. Lately, I have been given mood stabilizers like Lamictal and I just started Abilify (which, as you know, is a mood stabilizer/anti-psychotic).  I'm disturbed by the weight gain issue---15 to 20 pounds in my case, which isn't too bad since I was slender to begin with. However, these mood stabilizers seem to be more powerful than antidepressants. I also spent 2 months on Seroquel, but I had too many side effects.

So, some of the short acting benzos, mood stabilizers, and anti-psychotics might be a partial solution. Of course, my standard joke is that in 50 or more years, doctors will look back at us and say, "Remember, in the old days, when people actually took Prozac." Then all the MDs would laugh.  It may be like us looking back at the days of blood letting and leeches.

Answer 3

I agree with Steve. SSRIs aren't addictive. pain killers are and they can cause worse behaviors when patients have to ween themselves off of them. they can't take pain killers forever. I'm not trying to be rude at all when I say this but you are a psych nurse you should know that giving these patients painkillers as a therapeutic approach towards their well being is unethical. However, I'm sure they do make them happy!....Pain killers just make them more relaxed while they are on them. SSRI as I'm sure you know, build up in the blood stream and are known to work after 4-6 weeks...so if these client/recipients/ whatever/ were to stop taking them I'm sure that you would see much worse behavior reappears that existed before they started taking them and then you'd realize that the SSRI did work. SSRI are mainly for depression/anxiety......while I'm sure they are given to psych patients I'm also very sure that they are being taken along with a whole other classification of drugs for serious mental health diagnosis.

Answer 4

Do some more reading.  Antidepressants work on neurochemicals in the brain.  If you are a nurse you should know the answer to this already.