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jacobgkau parent
Your anecdote has nothing to do with whether it's better than a placebo or not.
wisty
A later comment notes that it works well for some patients and not others. The argument is that drugs probably don't fix things very well unless the cause is mostly just bad brain chemistry. Some people have bad brain chemistry, others have "real" (usually more external - financial, relationships, actual life issues) problems they need to fix, and hiding from them by just taking a pill to help ignore them might not work so well.

(OK bad brain chemistry is also a real problem, but one that's fixable with a pill).

Also yes that's all a bit simplified.

There's a stigma against pills for a number of reasons, some good and some bad, the fact that often they don't work being one reason.

ornornor
There is a case in between: sometimes the issues are too overwhelming and you can’t start fixing them until the pills give you the space you need to address them and get to a position where you can quit the pills.
directevolve
The study found the average effect was no different from placebo. It’s plausible, based on anecdotes like the one you’re responding to, that Prozac is harmful for some people, helpful for others, with the expected benefit close to zero. If so, it might be necessary to just try it and see if it’s obviously helping, keep taking if so, stop if not.
robertakarobin
This is, in fact, pretty much the exact procedure: try one type of treatment or medication, see if it's obviously helping, and if it isn't try a different treatment or medication. It's imprecise but it's the best we have.
biff1
The problem is that taking certain psychotropic medications changes your brain chemistry. It’s not as simple as it sounds. It’s not like trying on shoes. The brain is dynamic and drugs alter it, as does life experience, talk therapy, disease, aging, etc…
directevolve
That’s a statement of fact, but not intrinsically a problem. Being alive changes your brain chemistry.
BeetleB
His anecdote explicitly mentions the possibility of it being a placebo.
jacobgkau OP
No it doesn't. It doesn't contain the word "placebo." Can you quote where it "explicitly mentions" what you're saying it does?
robertakarobin
> If I have a good day it's impossible to day whether that's due to Prozac. But since starting Prozac I have been much more likely to have good days than bad. So, since Prozac is cheap and I don't seem to suffer any side effects, I plan to keep taking it in perpetuity.

I was acknowledging that the "good days" could be due to Prozac or could be a placebo effect, but since being on Prozac correlates with having significantly more good days, and I experience virtually no ill effects, I choose to continue with it.

some_guy_nobel
Wow, a shockingly argumentative tone for someone who is just flat out wrong.

Beyond the response someone else commented explaining exactly where the comparison was mentioned, the anecdote itself is useful in offering an experience of someone who's life has been changed by the drug.

In any case, the study mentioned in the article is a meta-analysis about children, not adults, so there is no onus on OP to qualify anything about placebo or not.

in_cahoots
To be fair, I didn't read that suggestion as being about a possible placebo effect, just that you can't attribute any one good day to the pill. It's like climate change- it undeniably exists, but you can't blame climate change for a single heat wave or freak storm.
cstrahan
You read it that way because that’s the sensible way to read it. Everyone suggesting you missed the plot is in turn making a rather large logical leap.
ozim
Some people just need to have stuff spelled out for them.
burnte
The comment never said otherwise. They shared a personal story about how it worked for an adult.
jacobgkau OP
No, they shared a personal story about how they think it worked, ignoring the data saying it likely didn't.
burnte
I said "it worked for an adult" because it did. It works. In adults. The article says it doesn't work well in adolescents, not adults. I work in mental health, I assure you fluoxetine works very well, but most drugs are not tested on non-adult populations. So this is a study on a population not normally tested to enhance the dataset we have about fluoxetine. More studies will try to replicate this result, and we'll have even more data about where it works and where it doesn't.

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