Antidepressants Vs. Placebo Pills

The placebo effect has been affecting people for hundreds of years. In the 1940s sugar pills were sold in doctors’ catalogs specifically for the purpose of prescribing them to psychiatric patients. Today, over 60% of doctors admit to prescribing placebos to their patients, although there is an unwritten rule among doctors in the United States that placebos should no longer be given to patients. Some even do it on a regular basis because they believe the effect a fake drug has on the brain is more effective for its price than the real medication or treatment. In the documentary, Placebo: Cracking the Code, viewers see a few different perspective of the placebo effect. They hear from doctors, patients, and researchers to more fully understand the ins and outs of the placebo effect. These different viewpoints serve as an effective way to bring light the producers’ purpose: to show just helpful and sometimes harmful placebo drugs can be.

In an age where constant new discoveries in the field of medicine are inevitable, society looks to medical advances for an opportunity to cure every ailment life produces. This essay will analyze the rhetoric argument entitled “Taking Pills for Happiness Reinforces the Idea That Being Sad is Not Human” composed for the Guardian Newspaper by Giles Fraser. Written in August of the year 2013 Fraser hopes to persuade the readers of the Guardian to agree with his analysis on sadness. The purpose of Frasers oratory is to persuade his audience that unhappiness is the body’s way of reacting to discomforts in life and rather than fight unhappiness, one should learn to accept that it is apart of life. Overall, Giles Fraser is effective when using pathos and logos to bolster the strength this piece and this adds to the

In her article “How Happy Are You and Why?,” Sonja Lyubomirsky argues that people have control over their own happiness. Lyubomirsky supports her claims with her interviews with happy people and scientific studies. Her purpose is to consider steps that people can take in order to become happier. She establishes an informal relationship with her audience of unhappy people.

As human beings we are naturally wired to seek happiness wherever we can find it. When we don’t, we may enter a stage of anger, anxiety, or distress. That’s why it is our personal goal to look for happiness and preserve it once we acquire it. Many have explored ways to find what triggers this feeling of “happiness” and what we can do to keep it; nonetheless, the evidence found is hardly sufficient to make a public statement on how to find happiness. For this reason, most of the time we speculate what might provoke this feeling of contentment. “Happiness is a glass half empty,” an essay written by Oliver Burkeman, highlights the importance of happiness and discloses how we can find delight through unorthodox methods. The prime objective of this piece of writing is to inform the audience about the effect of happiness on their lives and how their usual attempts of becoming happier can sabotage achieving this feeling. Furthermore, he wants to promote the benefits of pessimism and describe how it can help us in the long run. The author utilizes pronouns, logos, and pathos in order to prove his point and draw the audience into his essay, in an attempt of making them reconsider the way they live their lives and adopt this new pessimistic way that would greatly boost their level of happiness.

Begley argues that although everyone’s goal in life is to be happy, “too much happiness might not be such a good thing” (555). Begley believes that happiness is overrated and the media is forcing people to be happy against their will. For example, the media forces people to be happy against their will by advertising their self-help books, magazine articles and motivational speakers. The media also promotes the pharmaceutical companies that claim they are “working on a new drug to make [people] happier” (556). Begley also states that research has concluded “that being happier is not always better” and “the

Mark Kingwell, in his award winning book In Pursuit of Happiness, asserts that the pursuit of happiness is meaningful and that the benefits far outweigh the risks. In fact, Kingwell’s argument is centered on the idea that people who want to be happy will be happy if they would only pursue what is that brings them joy. For this reason, he disagrees with the idea that biology is the main indicator of a person’s happiness. The idea that “you are either happy or you’re not” (414). Though studies conducted by various universities and esteemed psychologists have reached the same conclusion. In a study conducted by Dr. Jerome Kagan, a prominent psychologist at Harvard University, he concludes that there is a clear connection between dopamine levels

Trained in the profession of psychology, Sharon Begley had multiple pieces published in The Wall Street Journal, and conducted several survey critiques of happiness. Begley introduces the article by talking about a book labeled “The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder.” Essentially, the novel depicts how today’s society relies too much on a pill for solving ones disputes. It is normal to feel dismal after an event such as a break up, and instead of letting an individual cope with the feelings the assumption is that a person is depressed and needs to seek medical attention. Begley proceeds to touch on the fact that “...only by experiencing sadness can we experience the fullness of the human condition” (557). It is necessary to feel all different emotions rather than masking them all with one. Begley is not stating that happiness is a bad thing, rather she interprets that it is healthier to be in a state where you can have improvement in your life.

Americans should be more aware of the false validity of the Chemical Imbalance Myth in our society today because of the immense usage of Antidepressants and the negative consequences they have on our physical and emotional health. The writers goal in writing this paper is not to say that mental illnesses are not real, rather, to point out some of the myths and traditions that are related to depression. We as a people tend to confuse normal emotions with clinical depression, in which they are prescribed antidepressants to make them feel better. The myth focused on in this paper is the “Chemical Imbalance” theory, which has been adopted by our society for years. The number of people in America that are currently on antidepressant medications is alarming and this issue must be addressed. A mistake that many well-meaning American’s make is taking pills when those pills are not necessary. These pills are rather damaging to an individual’s physical, emotional, and family health. When individuals take responsibility for their emotions and meet their core needs as a human, the normal emotion of sadness can be resolved.

To be depressed and joyless is just insupportable in today's society, happiness is becoming an argument in today's world. The article, “Happiness: Enough Already” by Sharon Begley, is to inform people that everyone undervalues the state of being happy; instead, they wanna push away the natural process of healing from melancholia. I believe this article can be directed to anybody who has suffered a maximum of happiness and sadness at least once, which almost every human being has or will experience once in their lifetime. The author makes valid statements throughout the article, an example would be everyone does not want to acknowledge that they are depressed, they either wanna “pop” a pill and forget about it or emotionally try to forget about it by just showing happy expressions. Even though everyone wants to have maximum happiness all the time, being depressed or heart

The author continues to demonstrate how the placebo effect works by comparing it to the famous biological study by Ivan Pavlov. In Pavlov’s experiment, dogs are conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus and eventually begin to respond to the same stimulus in the same way all the time. Bjerklie explains that, “as far as the placebo effect is concerned, we may as well be those impressionable canines.” What Bjerklie means is that the human mind has the ability to be conditioned to expect certain outcomes. The placebo effect builds on the human minds ability to be conditioned and an individual’s faith in the healthcare providers it choses to visit. Overtime the human mind has come to believe that if given a medication that is suppose to have a positive effect on a specific pathology, it will in fact have an positive effect.

Does cognitive-behavioral therapy work just as well as antidepressants when treating depression? How we perceive our depression is what helps to determine the type of treatment necessary. Antidepressants treat the common symptoms of depression rather than the condition while therapy helps change the thought process so the disease is cured in the end. Many studies are done to provide necessary information to what the answer to this question should be. The following articles provided studies that explained the effects of treatment with medication, with therapy, or a combination of both.

The pertinent findings will be explained, and their implications on future anti-depressants will be addressed.

In order to seize even a minuscule moment of bliss, some people can turn to the wrong source of satisfaction. As stated by Dr. Susan David, a profound psychologist at Harvard Medical School who wrote Don’t Worry, Be Gloomy: Negative Feelings Have Benefits Too, “An excess of freewheeling giddiness and a relative absence of more sober emotions can even be a marker for mania, a dangerous symptom of psychological illness (2016).” Individuals may confide in drugs, excessive spending, and even sexual intercourse to convey a happy facade. This prolonged cheerful exterior is damaging because they are distancing themselves from authenticity. The work of the sampling tools become undependable when producing credible information. Measuring happiness is not a definitive action, but that does not deter positive psychologists from instituting a dynamic force in the lives of

Is depression a subject that people typically tend to brush aside? Rather than facing away from a serious issue that people suffer from in their daily lives, we should discuss the methods to help people with their struggle from depression. A common method to treat depression is the use of antidepressants. But are they effective? Do they cause more harm and danger than aid? Are there other methods that can provide greater improvement rather than a pill? Instead​ ​of​ ​using​ ​antidepressants​ ​there​ ​are​ ​other​ ​alternatives such​ ​as​ ​placebos​ ​and​ ​types​ ​of​ ​therapy​ ​that​ ​can​ ​be​ ​just​ ​as,​ ​or​ ​more​ ​effective​ ​than​ ​the​ ​use​ ​of ​prescription​ antidepressants.

In total, the results of 1460 patients receiving antidepressant medication and 858 receiving a placebo sugar pill were analyzed. This analysis combined the results from these 19 different studies and generated an effect size (which is calculated as the mean of the experimental group minus the mean of the control group, divided by the pooled standard deviation SD). Once Kirsch and Sapirstein subtracted mean placebo response rates from mean drug response rates, they found a mean medication effect of 0.39 SDs (1). For each type of medication, the effect size for the active drug response to drug response is between 1.43 and 1.69, and the placebo response is between 74% and 76% of the active drug response. This means that 75% of the effect attributed to the perceived use of anti-depressants was due to the placebo. The perception of clinical benefit from antidepressants was largely attributed to the perceptions of the mind, and not to the actual chemical make-up of the pills patients were taking. The placebo effect shows us that the mind heavily influences our perceptions of wellness and health.