So did you take them and have a bad time? Because they definitely work for me and I doubt a placebo could have such a large effect on the 48 hour stomach pains I used to get alongside my frequent panic attacks.

I find it funny that people complain about emotional blunting when that is the entire purpose of the drug. I would prefer not to live on the razors edge ever again. I’ve had chronic anxiety and depression ever since I was a child, though.

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D-Machine 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For some people the emotional blunting is desirable, especially as you said, if the problem is chronic anxiety. But for many other people, their depression is defined by a lack of positive affect and anhedonia, meaning that emotional blunting is literally making things worse.

Depression is highly heterogenous, and I am glad the medication helped you.

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jakebol 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

SSRIs have much more clinical evidence of efficacy for addressing anxiety disorders vs a placebo than depression. The effect size is ~0.7 vs 0.2 in meta studies.

	▲	martinald 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Totally agree, they really shouldn't be called antidepressants at all. Important to add tho that for many with depression they have comorbid anxiety and often the anxiety is harder to tolerate than depression, so removal of anxiety symptoms can be hugely beneficial. Also, IME they are dosed completely wrong. So many people seem to be on very low doses, which has no improvement on placebo in the studies I've read. Whereas, higher doses are _hugely_ better than placebo, especially for anxiety. What's worse is a lot/most studies on SSRIs in general often don't adjust for dose. Which seems like an enormous oversight to me.

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JoshTriplett 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I find it funny that people complain about emotional blunting when that is the entire purpose of the drug.

The ideal would be to blunt the negatives but not the positives. The effect of some of the older antidepressants can be to blunt both, across the board.

Some of the newer atypical antidepressants can address depression without making everything flat.