The suicidal ideation of Antidepressants is a well communicated side effect. Antidepressants are prescribed by trained medical professionals who will tell you, encourage you to tell them if these side effects occur, and will encourage you to stop the medication if it does occur.

It's almost as if we've built systems around this stuff for a reason.

▲

Denatonium 6 days ago | parent [-]

In practice, they'll just prescribe a higher dose when that happens, thus worsening the problem.

I'm not defending the use of AI chatbots, but you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a worse solution for depression than the medical system.

▲

podgietaru 6 days ago | parent [-]

Not my experience at all. The Psych that prescribed me antidepressants was _incredibly_ diligent. Including with side effects that affected my day to day life like loss of Libido.

We spent a long time finding something, but when we did it worked exceptionally well. We absolutely did not just increase the dose. And I'm almost certain the literature for this would NOT recommend an increase of dosage if the side effect was increased suicidality.

The demonisation of medication needs to stop. It is an important tool in the toolbelt for depression. It is not the end of the journey, but it makes that journey much easier to walk.

▲

cameronh90 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm a happy sertraline user, but your experience sounds like the exception.

Most people are prescribed antidepressants by their GP/PCP after a short consultation.

In my case, I went to the doctor, said I was having problems with panic attacks, they asked a few things to make sure it was unlikely to be physical and then said to try sertraline. I said OK. In and out in about 5 minutes, and I've been on it for 3 years now without a follow up with a human. Every six months I do have to fill in an online questionnaire when getting a new prescription which asks if I've had any negative side effects. I've never seen a psychiatrist or psychologist in my life.

From discussions with friends and other acquaintances, this is a pretty typical experience.

P.S. This isn't in any way meant to be critical. Sertraline turned my life around.

▲

podgietaru 6 days ago | parent [-]

This is probably fair - My experience comes both from the UK (where it was admittedly worse, but not that much) and the Netherlands - where it was fantastic.

Even in the worst experiences, I had a followup appointment in 2, 4 and 6 weeks to check the medication.

	▲	cameronh90 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		My experience is in the UK, but it doesn't surprise me that you got more attention in the Netherlands. From the experiences of my family, if you want anything more than a paracetamol, you practically need sign off from the Minister of Health! Joking aside, they do seem to escalate more to specialists whereas we do more at the GP level.

▲

npteljes 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Unfortunately that's just a single good experience. (Unfortunately overall, not for you! I'm happy that your experience was so good.) Psych drugs (and many other drugs) are regularly overprescribed. Here is just one documented example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6731049/

Opioids in the US are probably the most famous case though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic