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A comment on Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax. Parent comment

Re:Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax by bspn on Sunday June 11, 2017 @11:01AM (#14532178)
I have started to take a more active role in my wife's ongoing treatment for this very reason. While I generally like her doctor, his willingness to bounce from drug-to-drug in an effort to treat her depression and anxiety is incredibly troubling for me as someone who grew up in a society where medication was seen as a last resort in the treatment cycle.

She has now been on Xanax, Cymbalta, Lyrica, Klonopin, Ativan .... I could go on. Every time she begins a new medicine or comes off an existing one is a trying time for both of us as the side effects (both mental and physical) can be incredibly brutal.

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Re:Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax by DanBC on Sunday June 11, 2017 @11:37AM (#14532340)
> I have started to take a more active role in my wife's ongoing treatment

You might be interested in the English NICE website, which sets out some evidence based standards for treatment of various disorders.

Here's what they say for general anxiety:

Recommendations for treatment: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg113

Quality recommendations: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53

Pathways: https://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/generalised-anxiety-di...

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Re:Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax by pjc50 on Sunday June 11, 2017 @11:26AM (#14532288)
Over what kind of time period is that? You're definitely not supposed to change drugs every few months.

For me the scattershot approach is most alarming; it would be far better if there were some kind of in-vitro test to see what would be best rather than "suck it and see". I've seen a few other people have problems with that.

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Re:Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax by TeMPOraL on Sunday June 11, 2017 @11:40AM (#14532351)
From what I heard, it is this way because there is currently no better way of determining which psychiatric drug will work best besides going for trial and error.
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Re:Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax by bspn on Sunday June 11, 2017 @01:13PM (#14532759)
It's been over 2-3 years, but I would say on average her regime changes every 3-4 months. We saw another specialist recently who introduced us to a test that does a genetic screen to help identify what medicine should theoretically be the most effective. Here's hoping it works!

EDIT: the service is called GeneSight: https://genesight.com/

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Re:Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax by mercer on Sunday June 11, 2017 @01:20PM (#14532783)
What non-medication treatments have you been trying, if any? And which had the most positive effect, in your estimation? To be clear, I'm asking this purely out of curiosity, not because I think medication is a bad solution or anything like that!
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