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A comment on Can sleep deprivation cure depression?. Parent comment

Re:Can sleep deprivation cure depression? by taurath on Saturday March 11, 2017 @01:54PM (#13846610)
There's a certain level of orthodoxy in psychiatry now.. I have yet to see anyone try to get any information other than "let's try putting you on this extremely mood altering pill with side effects for a month". No attempt is made to find any real evidence other than anecdotal patient information. Maybe the science isn't there?
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Re:Can sleep deprivation cure depression? by kolinko on Saturday March 11, 2017 @03:12PM (#13846997)
The science isn't there yet :( Quite likely there are various neurologial/genetic reasons for things like adhd and depression.

It's quite likely that there are many subtypes of that, depending on which pathways are broken, but we aren't good enough yet to figure out the details.

If you have a car with a locked hood, there is not much you can do but hit it in various places and hope it works.

Some people are trying to unlock the hood, and one day they surely will succeed. But for now, all we're left with is listening carefully and trying from the safest to the craziest options.

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Re:Can sleep deprivation cure depression? by chongli on Saturday March 11, 2017 @02:59PM (#13846917)
Maybe the science isn't there?

That's exactly it. A given drug may be one person's savior and another person's nightmare. It's extremely complex. To get just a hint of what may be going on, check out Scott's article on ANTIDEPRESSANT PHARMACOGENOMICS [0].

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/06/antidepressant-pharmac...

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Re:Can sleep deprivation cure depression? by taurath on Saturday March 11, 2017 @04:36PM (#13847394)
And it's failing patients left and right, who have to somehow go to work while already stressed anxious or depressed while now having to deal with rapid mood changes, insomnia, or one of any other side effects. If you roll the dice and get the wrong medication you will be worse off where you started. People shouldn't be used as test tubes - in no other field is it okay to "experiment" on people like in psychiatry.
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