Sometimes girls get depressed when their periods start. Girls often don't ovulate regularly, which can cause problems until their cycle stabilizes. Sometimes pediatricians don't allow girls' cycles to stabilize. The doctor says to the girl, "you're a woman now, so we're going to regulate your irregular period with birth control."
Women often get depressed due to the progestins used in all the birth control prescriptions.
SSRIs never help because of boosting serotonin. When someone benefits, it's from the drug's other physiological effects.
It's too early to say. Obviously the idea is to get her off it if possible.
SSRIs never help because of boosting serotonin.
That's a hell of a claim, which could use some evidence.
> That's a hell of a claim, which could use some evidence.
My experience with the chatbots is that they start with the conventional marketing tropes, but if you ask pointed questions they'll dig into the actual research.
This thread started with a generic question about why ECT seemed to help some patients. It had a really good reasoning about why SSRIs are still the first-line treatment for depression, even though the MAOIs were much better drugs.
https://chatgpt.com/share/69207aa3-26a0-8005-8dda-8199da153f...
The Big Picture
SSRIs flood serotonin globally, which can suppress
dopamine/norepinephrine and blunt mood.
Anti-serotonin strategies (receptor-specific antagonism,
reuptake enhancement, or targeted modulation) often
result in cleaner antidepressant effects with fewer
side effects.
This supports the criticism you mentioned: SSRIs may
“work” only because the brain adapts to the serotonin
disruption, whereas directly reducing or modulating
serotonin is more therapeutic.
A simple pregnenolone supplement can sometimes be magical, because of the steroidogenesis cascade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid#/media/File:Steroidoge...
There's a supplement seller that said his pregnenolone powder was made with a newer, cleaner process than is used by most of the pregnenolone supplement vendors, but I don't know if he's still using that supplier. The powders are a much better value than the capsules.
hth.
Because this class of drugs was so heavily promoted for such a long time, the side effects have always been swept under the rug.
My comment above proposed that the 11yo girl's depression could actually be caused by precocious puberty. Another possibility is that she's a poor methylator (#MTHFR) who's poisoned by fortified flour and other sources of shelf-stable provitamins.
I haven't yet found a comprehensive SSRI-truth resource that makes SSRI advocates pause their advocacy, so I just shared the chatbot link. This was supposed to provide the father enough of the background terms and anti-SSRI thinking for him to search for his own resources.
Someone else posted a link to "The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence" [2022] at Nature [1]. This is okay, but it still dances around the core issue: whether ECT and Serotonin-enhancers sometimes benefit people because of how the brain responds to brain damage.
You understand that the people who sold you that drug have a vested interest in making sure it's not possible and/or that you & she think it's not possible, right?
Usually this takes the form of "I'm prescribing you with <Brand> instead of generic" or "I'm prescribing you this specific drug from this class of drug"
From your own source: "In 2024: $172 or more in general payments have been received by half of physicians."
Even if all of those payments count as kickbacks, a median of $172 in a year (significantly less than 0.1% of the median physician's annual pay) is not "a lot of kickbacks".
How is it different from the expected hormonal changes that an adolescent is expected to go through?
@dang it's hard to believe that I'm not being brigaded.
Of the recent downvoted comments, one was a complaint about moderation that anyone who has paid attention to dang's track record here over more than a decade knows is baseless. (And if you think the top comment on any thread is a bad one, you can always choose to be a helpful contributor to the community and email us to let us know).
Of the other two of your downvoted comments, none were downvoted by the same users.
The choice is yours to make an effort to observe the guidelines and be a positive contributor to HN, or alternately to keep using HN for political/ideological battle and complain to the moderators when things don't go your way, but it's clear what others in the community want to see.
You're a ridiculous person.
> or alternatively to keep using HN for political/ideological battle
Which ones? The one about ML and programming languages? Or the one about asking a genuine question about an experience with childhood depression? Or the one observing that you and dang unevenly apply moderation rules? Or the one commenting about how you can't say the word for the literal definition of fascism on this site without getting downvoted? Or the one about dishwashers?
Where's my ideological battle?
You have no credibility. You unlike dang, don't do a good job. Go ahead and ban me or put me on a cool down to prove my point.
Please.
> having established a history of participating on HN with this persona of being a brave combatant for, I don't know, some worldview or philosophy that you seem to be fighting for;
What? Just because I have a different worldview than you, doesn't mean I am fighting for or am a brave combatant of anything. But it's extremely telling that you think that, and revealing about your own views. And furthermore troubling that you are a moderator here.
Maybe you should read up on the clustering phenomena wiki and understand your own personal biases a little more.
You don't know what my worldview is or what dang's worldview is and honestly I don't know what your worldview is and this is never relevant to how we moderate HN. We want HN to be a place where difficult topics can be discussed and all perspectives can be represented. That's what we optimise HN for, with the caveat that the guidelines foremost ask us all to "be kind" in comments. It's notable that you keep complaining about some kind of "bias" without being able to point to any evidence for your claims, and that all of your comments in this subthread ultimately resort to ad hominem. If there was any substance to your claims you would have presented it by now. The entire history of HN submissions and comments is available for anyone to download and analyse.
Let's be clear what's going on here: you've claimed to be a victim; you can't demonstrate exactly how you've been made a victim; when we investigate your claims, which we've taken time to do in good faith, we find that, no, there's no evidence for your claims of victimhood; when we tell you that, you respond with ad hominem attacks.
Please just observe the guidelines like everyone here is expected to do.
Your continued aggressive dismissal of milquetoast commentary against your moderation style is offensive.
Your characterization of my posts here as a warrior championing some cause is similarly offensive.
Your words, not mine:
> ... having established a history of participating on HN with this persona of being a brave combatant ...
How kind, and full of good faith.
You clearly feel something towards my worldview. Your language is charged, you have opinions directed at me. To be clear: I don't care about you at all. But I do find it amusing to watch such a visceral reaction to a general commentary, "the mods are biased, and shape the bias of this website."
Your worldview is irrelevant. This place’s entire worth is built on the fact that a broad range of worldviews are represented, and our moderation philosophy is intended to allow everyone’s worldview to be fairly represented.
We're responding to your claims only because if there is any basis to them we want to know so we can address any issues and reform the way we operate. We’re actively working to do that continually. But it’s increasingly clear that neither claim holds up to any scrutiny and every comment you add just generates more noise and no signal.
Some people would rather believe that pediatric depression isn't real, rather than confront the reality of a loved and cared-for child who is constantly tearful, severely underweight, sleeps for three or four hours a night, spends most of their time staring into space and frequently talks about wanting to die.
Depression is an utterly dreadful illness and should not be confused with normal sadness or unhappiness.