Anyone taking Effexor for depression, get off of it now. It's side effects far out weigh the benefits. Alot of doctors do not have your best interest at heart when they prescribe because they are being influenced by the pharmacutical companies. Your doctor wants to keep his license so he has to push the pharmacuticals as dictated to him. If you don't think the pharmacutical companies run things, then you have not done your home work.

Addictive Zyprexa Pushed by Lilly Drug Reps

They called it the "VIVA ZYPREXA" campaign to off label market Eli Lilly Zyprexa as a fix for unapproved usage.

Zyprexa (Olanzapine) is known as an atypical antipsychotic It's mechanism of action is thought to be that it increases levels of serotonin and dopamine. It's chemical name is thienobenzodiazepine although is not a benzo like valium.One of it's well known major side effects is weight gain which is why it is sometimes favored for those with eating disorders (which would be an off label use)

Doctors are at liberty prescribe drugs 'off label' like Zyprexa which is only FDA approved for schizophrenia and bipolar.They can give it or just about any drug for conditions other than what the drug was tested for.The doctors don't realize that Zyprexa is very addictive once a dependence has been built up and withdrawal is wicked.

Daniel Haszard http://www.zyprexa-victims.com

All I can say is the I have been taking Prozac since 1994 and it changed my life. I can track my depression since I was about 9 years old. Depression is just a s real as cancer and I give thanks to the people who discovered anti-depressants.

Deb - I'm with you! I've been on generic Prozac (20mg) for the past 4 years and have never been better! I have suffered from depression most of my life and fluoxetine hydrochloride gave me my life back. It's made me a better mother, wife and human being! Thank you drug companies! These writers must be friends with Tom Cruise and Scientology and don't believe in depression!

Has anyone ever heard of 5-HTP, It is a natural anti-depressant sold in health food stores and it works incredibly well at 50MG doses as long as you do not take it with a chemical depressant. Oh, and no side effects.

You Prozac pushers are really nuts: You are charging that the editors of the New England Journal Of Medicine are Scientologists??? Forget anti-depressants -- you people should be on ANTI-PSYCHOTICS!

I have been a physician for 55 years. Four 45 years I have practiced Family Medicine. Many of my patients had an improvement with their quality of life with antidepressents. Some where unable to function without these drugs. Remember when people feared that Prozac caused suicidal tendencies? After WW 1 veterans with post traumatic coonditions had to be locked up for life without the benefit of these drugs. all we had then was electric shock therapy. Practice medicine not just review studies.

not everyone is going to get the same results from depression meds. it took several years for me to find one that worked. paxil cr saved me and my sanity

I used Paxil and Wellbutrin for two years, together with migrain meds. I had over three "thoughts" of suicide. Locked in my running car with the garage door down. I told the Dr. I was taking too much medication. That it said on the bottle, it caused "thoughts" of suicide, anxiety, etc. No, he said, I needed more meds. He ups the meds. I'm now looking over the railing of a sixth floor hotel room. If it weren't for a very smart pharmacist, who knows. Now they say the drugs may not have been working anyway and they weren't telling.

I also was not referring to schizophrenic patients who need a different form of medication.

One person wrote that a placebo would have helped my patients with their depresion and they would have had the same results with their feelings and sense of well being. Maybe I should have told all these people to "just snap out of your depressive feelings" and all would have been well and here are special jelly beans to help you...

Zoloft was mentioned but nothing more was said about it does anybody no anything, my son is taking it help I;m scared now

Hey Dr. Lubin:
For a physician, your comments sure are ignorant and arrogant. You probably think the New England Journal of Medicine publishes quack science. And you obviouly have NO understanding of the placebo effect. Hell...you are probably also pushing all the cholesterol meds (not the statins) on your patients that have just been proven not to work.

The disorder about which they wrote "Considering that Pfizer is now making $1.7 billion off a drug treating a condition that the medical field is not in agreement as to whether it exists or not," is, I believe, fibromyalgia and not depression. (There were articles in the paper within the last day or two as to the disagreement within the medical community as to whether fibromyalgia was a real disorder or not.)
Thank you.

The problem is there is no alternative other than the antidepressants and talk therapy. Both fail many people. And, even the people who claim they were helped are not given all the fact sor any options. 5-HTP & Now L-Tryptophane is back in the market place. I tried all of the SSRI's with mixed results and, even more problems due to side effects. The drug comapnies studies to get these SSRI"s approved uses test people 25-45 with low to moderate depression. There is better options but, medicine is not interested and, insurance will not pay for them. The chemical imbalances are not permanent as doctors are taught and patients are made to believe.
In many parts of the world they have better methods western society does not accept. It is pure ignorance. Read : Instinct to Heal. Or, even better get a cure...........John F. Barnes, myofascial release approach to health care and, his book "Healing Ancient Wounds".

Conventional medicine is so fragmented today is part of the propblem. They do not even "touch" people anymore accept with a scalpel or machine.

The body is capable of healing itself. The body doesnt know the difference between emotional or physical trauma. The body doesn t lie.

Sam-e and 5 HTP or LTyptophane,,,,are faster working , less side effects and better off for the patient in the long term. Unfortunately, there is no money for the drug, insurance and heath care practioners. Our society demends a quick fix today. The insurance comapnies have a bean counter deciding what is best for a patent. Our medical system is out of control. It is a wealth care system not a health care system. We need to redesign the health care paradigm which is based on faulty information.

You do not need antidepressants. What we really need is love, compassion and, people that can spend more than 10-15 minutes with patients.

There is no healing doctor or department anywhere. It is all left to drugs and scalpels.

People can heal themselves. We just do not teach anyone how to do it.

Just as we always suspected...the Pharms are not too much better than snake oil salesmen. My mother was on 33 meds just before she died. Seems like she became a pharm dumping ground when it seemed she wasn't going to make it. She was on Prozac, and it changed her personality and she became someone I didn't know whom I had known all of my life up until that point.
I recently found out my Dr. was prescribing brand name drugs for me when cheaper generics were available. Be aware folks, the Pharm companies are in it to make money at your expense whether the drugs work or not.