Since you like happy stories, this is Rudy, (full name Rooty Tooty Fresh n Fruity). He was not so fresh or fruity when we caught him out in the street- he had cherry eye on the eye in the picture. He was terrified and snappy at first, but now he’s a clingy lap dog who loves to cuddle with his ice cream cone chew toy.
That is possibly the second longest dog name I’ve ever encountered.
All my life I’ve heard non-cat people insisting cats don’t love you and just want food but actual scientific testing confirms what anyone with cats already knows, that given the choice they would actually rather see their people first than just eat.
The fact that antidepressants and antipsychotics are both ultimately harmful to recovery is not new information at this point. Both of those have been established for years.
Why do doctors still prescribe them? Lots of reasons:
-Accepting that you’ve been hurting your patients and increasing their chances of relapse for no/limited reasons for years, maybe decades, is a hell of a thing. The cognitive dissonance in favor of ignoring it, or deciding the evidence has to be wrong, is heavy.
-They don’t keep up with current research, or they don’t keep up with the journals this has been published in, or they kind of sort of do but they only had time to read a few articles and really they’re busy and out of school and journal subscriptions are expensive, you know?
-Some of them just don’t care. Particularly in the case of anti-psychotics, which make relapses more frequent and more likely, but temporarily shut patients up and make them/us less annoying through sedation.
-Many doctors just don’t understand science that well – practicing medicine is very different from doing research. Even if they see the evidence, they think, “Well, my patients got better [because of placebo/because of other factors/because of coincidence/yeah, for six months until they stopped seeing you and then they relapsed], so this article has to be wrong,” and move on with their lives.
Realistically, institutions move slowly. Medicine moves slowly. Professionals don’t like changing their minds or methods, especially when doing it might incur guilt. ECT (”shock” therapy) is still used by some doctors. The French psychiatric system still heavily uses Freudian theory. This shit is not going to change until we change it.
“Antidepressants are supposed to work by fixing a chemical imbalance, specifically, a lack of serotonin in the brain. Indeed, their supposed effectiveness is the primary evidence for the chemical imbalance theory. But analyses of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits are due to the placebo effect. Some antidepressants increase serotonin levels, some decrease it, and some have no effect at all on serotonin. Nevertheless, they all show the same therapeutic benefit. Even the small statistical difference between antidepressants and placebos may be an enhanced placebo effect, due to the fact that most patients and doctors in clinical trials successfully break blind. The serotonin theory is as close as any theory in the history of science to having been proved wrong. Instead of curing depression, popular antidepressants may induce a biological vulnerability making people more likely to become depressed in the future.”
like is this for fucking real???? WHAT?
And I need to know if a similar study has been done on adhd meds
Edit: I googled the journal and it sounds like a legit journal, but the conversational writing style is throwing me off and I want to know more about like. everything about this cause this is a fucking big claim to make
Yeah this is definitely a legit source and since it’s from 2014 if no one has found anything wrong in this yet….
I mean on some level I do understand. Like I could have reblogged this to my main, I didn’t put it on twitter in the big rant I had today about informed consent with psyche drugs and the fact people claim anti-depressents are “safe”
Because I know people who follow me there are on them and for them they are Working and if I post this they will Stop Working. Some of these people already have the permanent damage from side effects so it’s too late to stop that.
Like the convincing part about this for me is that it isn’t just about the science, it’s about the moral implications and the dilemma. These drugs are placebos, but for the average person they are REALLY FUCKING GOOD placebos. The most effective placebos. This is in fact probably why they keep being prescribed off label for chronic pain, and why people say they work for their chronic pain. For some people… it might be worth it.
That being said FUCK the fact that people are still gaslit and blamed for these drugs not working. If they won’t take them off the market doctors should at least be educated in the fact these are placebos. I know they are not because while my therapist DOES think they are useless trash pills she does not seem to be aware that that is intentional.
Also ADHD drugs are not fake (unless they are fake stimulants)I know this because I have been told that meth works as a substitute and people occasionally find out they need adhd meds because they used meth recreationally. Caffeine in huge quantities apparently also works for some people. So those are a normal “it probably won’t work for everyone but it definitely does for some people. Also they probably would not be on the market otherwise because lol controlled substance.
For the record, placebos still work if people know they’re placebos; placebos actually can get more effective if a doctor gives them to you and explains the placebo effect and that you should expect to experience it, iirc, though I read that elsewhere. (The article talks a bit about this.)
It also discusses the fact that antidepressants have bad enough side effects and are physically addictive enough that knowingly using them as placebos probably isn’t ethical, but all other depression treatment has similar effectiveness, and you could also prescribe, like, sugar pills as an open placebo.
There’s also the fact that people who have been on antidepressants are more likely to become depressed again later. This is an effect separate from severity – it’s not that people who are likely to relapse are more likely to be prescribed drugs, the drugs cause the later vulnerability. (The article cites studies on this subject, if you want to verify it, read it again.)
Of course, for people who are already physically addicted to them and are already susceptible to relapse because of them, the balance of factors is different.
As for whether the article is accurate, the results have been replicated – that is, other people have done the same thing and found the same results – four times, and they cite two additional similar studies which had similar conclusions.
Do you know how many dogs I’ve met that get scared or anxious around men because in their previous home men hit them? A lot, and they are very protective of the women who have adopted them now.
Men who are violent towards women are often violent towards animals as well. They think we’re all chattel. If a man wants you to choose between your dog or cat or him, dump the guy. Those animals will love you for the rest of your life, loyal and true.
Actually, I have something to add.
The other day I saw a story where a woman was asking why her dogs had suddenly started growling at her boyfriend whenever he was in the same room as her son.
And my immediate thought was ‘that boyfriend has hurt the kid somehow.’
Spoilers: that was exactly the case.
Trust ur dogs when they say something is off.
The first time my sister came to visit, via plane, after I got my dog, pupper growled at her and wouldn’t go near her for the first day. Next visit was by car (two day drive)and pupper LOVED my sister. They snuggled and played and none of us could figure out why the change. We thought maybe the scent of my sisters cat had lingered on her clothes, making that first visit a rough one. Whereas when she came by car, the scent had had time to wear off. Well that was partially true…
Fast forward about six months when I went north to visit my family. My sister walked into my parents’ house and pupper ran to greet my sister. Stopped dead in her tracks and started growling and barking. Hackles raised, full protection mode. My sisters husband had just walked in behind her.
My precious puppy wanted NOTHING to do with him. She barked, growled, ran away, and sat between him and my sister. Y’all my dog had spent maybe a weekend a half around my sister but protected her like this was her flesh and blood.
Eventually, my sister filed for divorce on grounds of “Extreme and repeated mental, emotional, and sexual abuse.” Divorce was final in less than a month because her claims were substantiated.
Trust the dog, honey. They KNOW.
I’ve never owned dogs, but I used to work with horses (which are a lot like big dogs).
There was this one horse I worked with named Tonto. He was a doll. He followed me like a puppy, snuck treats out of my pocket, he was the sweetest thing. We were practically inseparable.
A guy I was considering dating came to visit me one day, and Tonto wanted NOTHING to do with him. Normally well behaved, he shoved himself between us and would NOT let this guy near me. He was stomping, acting really aggressive, and tried to bite the guy. This horse was practically dragging me back toward the barn. At that moment, despite being like, 17, I knew something was up, and ultimately things didn’t pan out for guy and me.
A year later I found out he had lied about his age (he said he was 18 but he was actually 27) he was arrested for sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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