re: Middle aged males on antidepressants?

quote:

---

My most common side effect was lack of sex drive/performance issues. I never had any serious side effects.

---

That sounds pretty serious to me.

Check this book out. I'm a vet with ptsd. Helped me out, once I got over how gay it looked and finally read it. Lyrica is pretty amazing for anxiety and neuropathic pain...just a thought. Cheers mate

Oh, and I have a pretty fricked back and knee. Went on the keto diet and have had significant relief...there are studies, albeit limited, that show positive benefits of the keto diet with regards to not only inflammation but mood. The mood effects make sense, as keto diet is used in seizure disorders and all of our mood stabilizers are antiepileptics.

I am 30 and on Zoloft. It’s been great for me. I was on AD’s For the first time back in college and I stopped taking them because whatever I was on sucked. Got back on them a year ago and they have somewhat changed my life.

quote:

---

Your wife probably appreciated more than the usual 2 minutes.

---

I'm 100% single.

My life consists of work, drinking whiskey, video games, and p0rn.

Not necessarily in that order and sometimes at the same time.

The only inconvenience of the side effect was my right arm would get really tired.

Mirtazapine will help with a good night’s sleep and that will make you feel better quickly. Sleeping well and feeling rested gives you a better general outlook on many things that may bother you.

quote:

---

My advice is don’t get on them because they are a bandaid and don’t last

---

Yep. A real bitch to stop taking and then you have the rebound afterwards.


Go the CBT route before taking any drugs. CBT has been shown to be MORE effective and longer lasting than anti-depressants.

For me it was weight gain, lethargy and some loss of sex drive. It took me years but I slowly weaned myself down to the lowest dosage they offer my medicine in. I've lost about 15 pounds, have more energy and my "new" wife seems to enjoy it.

quote:

---

So wrong

---

LINK

quote:

---

As a general rule, findings suggest that CBT can do anything that medications can do in the treatment of the nonpsychotic disorders and it can do so without causing problematic side effects. CBT also can address symptoms on a more enduring basis.

---

quote:

---

Research suggests that medications often work but they do so only for so long as you keep taking them, whereas CBT may reduce risk for subsequent symptom return long after treatment is over.

---

LINK

quote:

---

The evidence shows that that CT is as efficacious as ADM, and that its effects are more enduring. Thus, even if CT and ADM work through the same mechanisms in the same temporal order to reduce depressive symptoms, any enduring effects of CT must be produced by mechanisms that are not mobilized in the same way by ADM. The model that is proposed in this article suggests that CT helps patients learn to recruit prefrontal regulatory brain mechanisms – a skill that these patients could continue to use long after treatment ends. 

---

LINK

quote:

---

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is more effective than medication in treating social anxiety disorder, according to a new study.

Evan Mayo-Wilson, DPhil, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of interventions for adults with social anxiety disorder conducted between 1988 and 2013. A total of 101 trials with 13,164 participants were included.

About 9,000 participants received medication or a placebo, while the remainder received psychotherapy. Relatively few of the trials examined medication in combination with talk therapy.

---

quote:

---

Among different types of talk therapy examined — including CBT, self-help, mindfulness and psychodynamic psychotherapy — CBT was found to be the most effective, the researcher reported in The Lancet Psychiatry. In addition, it has fewer side effects compared to pharmacotherapy.

---

quote:

---

“Now that we know what works best, we need to improve access to psychotherapy for those who are suffering,” Mayo-Wilson said in a statement. “Greater investment in psychological therapies would improve quality of life, increase workplace productivity, and reduce health care costs.”

---

quote:

---

While antidepressants are the most commonly used treatment for social anxiety disorder, new research suggests that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is more effective and, unlike medication, can have lasting effects long after treatment has stopped.

The findings of the study, a network meta-analysis that collected and analyzed data from 101 clinical trials comparing multiple types of medication and talk therapy, are published online Sept. 26 in The Lancet Psychiatry. The research was a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Oxford University and University College London.

---

I'm a MH provider and can tell you that any serotinergic medication will run the risk of causing sexual side effects....serotonin prolongs ejaculation or even prevents it altogether and SSRI's are actually used for pts with premature ejaculation. Its postulated that these effects are attributed to the stimulation of a certain receptor, 5HT1A.

Trintellix has the lowest risk of causing these issues due to its novel ability to inhibit reuptake of serotonin while blocking that receptors activity.... but its expensive as frick

A cheaper alternative is to add Buspar, as it is generic and also blocks these receptors to offset this side effect. The funny thing is that buspar is FDA approved for anxiety, but is absolutely garbage for it but works wonders for SSRI induced sexual dysfunction