Some discussion of pharma-psychiatry stuff, i haven't gone through to verify claims (whether it's some crank journals), but the gist is that antidepressants show effectiveness around placebo for depression treatment, and thus not getting success from them and getting approved for ketamine shouldn't inspire confidence, as it shows the same effectiveness.
(obviously not a call to abandon medication if it helps you, who it helps - it helps)
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"We've tried everything! Why are people depressed!?"
"Have... have we tried making their lives not inherently depressing due to alienation, constant stress of losing access to medical care, housing, food, etc., or everything being focused on commodity consumption?"
"... no? Why the fuck would we try that? Anyone have any actual ideas?"
Not that this would solve all depression. It is one of those things though that I look at like "Isn't the normal human response to living in a hell world with no future... to become depressed?" (Or angry, etc.) It just feels like none of the treatments work for the obvious reason of they are treating symptoms, not the problem. The problem being (again, not all of the time)... capitalism, basically.
Treating symptoms definitely helps people cope and achieve higher quality of life outcomes, but unlike some other medical conditions where the underlying problem can't be solved currently (maybe ever), there is a solution to alleviate the societal-level gloom. You know, just for science. Give it a try and see if people feel like shit all the time still. Who knows!
I am kind of waiting for articles on reports of SAD (seasonal affective disorder aka being depressed during winter) decreasing as winters are warmer due to climate change. "Yes, we're boiling the oceans, but have you been outside in January when it feels like May? Eh? Pretty nice, right?"
I've heard many a psychologist and therapist lament that the actual treatment their patient needs is money for rent.
Well, they're closer (imo) to the actual solution
If they remove the capitalism goggles and dare to imagine a world where there were no rent to worry about...
Pretty sure this surface level "obvious" truth is why libs lose their fucking minds about "the left" generally.
They maintain their day to day grasp on reality by believing in certain "truths" like "housing must be a commodity." Or "healthcare cannot be free. Even if it's taxpayer funded, it is still never "free."" (You see that constantly)
Everything to them is only measurable in currency. It's all an exchange. The idea of people all cooperating and striving for the best possible world for everyone instead of competing for the small islands away from Hell is like... dividing by zero for them or something. It's literally not possible to compute. At best they can sort of play with the idea, draw some graphs to infinity or some shit to show what it might be like.
When you try to explain plainly that everything can be had and the only thing stopping a better world is the very systems they reflexively defend they tell you are deluded and lost in dreams of utopia. The sad truth is the people they believe dream of utopia are the realists. They are the delusional ones if they believe the system currently destroying our world and the lives of everything on it is going to also solve the problems it creates.
The mysticism that liberals create to hide truths has become an inflexible ideology. Basically a religion at this point. The solution to fixing things is simply to "hope" and wait until capitalism solves the problem. Much like actual religion can do, it removes personal responsibility from those who could otherwise affect change. It gives a sense of false hope and also an immediate fall back when the inevitable bad outcome occurs. "Ah, but there was nothing we could've done. The free market would've prevented this if it were possible..."
Hexbear mutual aid comm is the greatest anti-depressant the imperial core has ever known! /hj
I wish this was posted to c/drugs instead. I am surrounded by ketamine abuse of varying levels of life-altering and it is unpleasant to be suddenly reminded of that with no CW or ability to block comm/etc
It would be nice if hexbear allowed for blocking keywords and those keywords could be attached to posts via content warnings or just text that was found within the linked post/article or headline.
Well shit. Last I'd heard it was showing effectiveness in about 85% of cases.
I legit think the reason for the decline of observed effectiveness is that as psych treatment has become more widely available they're running in to a much higher number of people whose symptoms are caused by either more severe traumas or more intractable socio economic circumstances than ssris can overcome.
The results of the Stanford study? Both the placebo group and ketamine group showed large improvement post-infusion at one, two, and three days; the likely explanation, according to the researchers, was that heightened expectations created this improvement, as such expectations can be created by the belief that one is taking a powerful antidote. However, in comparing the effectiveness between the placebo group and the ketamine group, the researchers concluded: “A single dose of intravenous ketamine compared to placebo has no short-term effect on the severity of depression symptoms in adults with major depressive disorder . . . . Our results suggest that ketamine may actually be ineffective for the short-term treatment of MDD.” The patients were followed for two weeks and assessed at 7 days and 14 days, and the placebo group actually did better than the ketamine group, especially at the beginning of this time period.
single injection and short term efffects are there, but long term seems whatevs (?)people sometimes misunderstand placebo point as well, that people believe it's medication. You eating sugar tablets you self-prescribed would help much less than eating sugar tablets prescribed by a doctor. So if they suggest some medication, it still might help randomly (or by matching your issue)
Placebo effect can be pretty strong, then. At least that's one way to think of it.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11271411/
This study shows twice weekly oral ketamine to be superior to placebo.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2735111
I believe this shows the same thing for twice monthly esketamine nasal spray
Aside from declared conflict of interest. the first one do be showing some improvement only on 180 mg dose i think, 20% remission vs 35%, which is significant mind you, but not one shot wonder
