“There are millions who are being treated for depression,” says Dr. Harvey Kaufman, a licensed clinical psychologist. “There are more that aren’t. There are many people who do not even realize they are depressed. They have been depressed their whole life.”
Catherine, a senior ETSU mass communication student, has been on antidepressants for 20 years. “Without these drugs I would never get through college,” she says.
Antidepressants are a way of life for Catherine, as they are for many other people. “With the first episode of depression, patients take them for nine months regardless of their symptoms,” says Dr. Binoy Shah, an ETSU psychiatrist in the ETSU Counseling Center.
“They may not ever need further medication. But, 50 percent of people who have had one episode will have another, and, 80 percent of those people will have to be medicated a third time. Once a patient has been medicated for depression three times, they are very likely to have to be on antidepressants for the rest of their life.”
More than half of the patients Shah sees are there because of depression, he says. Regardless of the patient’s basis for depression, whether it is a situational period after the death of a loved one or a chemical imbalance in the brain, not taking the prescribed medication could have serious results, Shah says. The worst side effect, he says, is worsening depression.
With worsening depression, the likelihood of suicidal thoughts grows.
Seven to 12 percent of men and 20 to 25 percent of women will experience a major depressive episode in their lifetime, say Dr. Keith A. Trujillo and Dr. Andrea B. Chinn, professors at California State University.
“The cost of depression in terms of loss of function, missed work and treatment has been estimated to be $16 billion per year in the United States alone, Trujillo and Chinn say. “The human cost is significant as well, with as many as 80 percent of attempted suicides attributed to major depression.”
Humans suffering from depression, whether it be situational or long-term, should seek medical attention. “I have a mental disorder geared toward a chemical imbalance with my brain, and it’s not situational,” Catherine, who takes Wellbutrin and Essesor, says. “I will be on antidepressants for the rest of my life.”
Without the antidepressants, Catherine says she cannot control her emotions, but she doesn’t suffer from the normal side effects associated with the drugs such as night sweats, the shakes and sexual side effects.
She does, however, experience vertigo and nausea if she forgets to take her medication for a day or two, she says.
Obtaining her own medication gets harder as people start self-medicating. “I think that they really need to think about what they are doing,” Catherine says, “There is a reason that these things aren’t on the open market. If you don’t have the chemical imbalances in your brain, you can really mess yourself up.”
Self-medicating is not safe, Kaufman says. “These medications have side effects,” he says, “It can be dangerous. People need to be taught that.”
Even though people do self-medicate with access to drugs over the Internet and by ways of using other people’s prescription pills, there are consequence.
“They [people who self-medicate] are making my life more difficult, because it makes it harder for me to fill my prescription,” Catherine says. “I have learned to live with my depression. I spend a lot of time every day working on the problems I have that are associated with my mental disorder.
“It makes me mad that people are taking these things without being prescribed to them. All they are doing is hurting themselves.”
Ryan, an ETSU student, was a self-medicated user taking antidepressants. “I took them for a month and a half and then I quit taking them,” he says. “I was noticing the classic signs of clinical depression – excessive sleeping, loss of interest in social activities, short temper and severe irritability.”
Ryan got his medication from a friend who had been prescribed the medication but didn’t want to take them any longer.
“She decided she wanted to take a break from them,” he says. “I had taken them in high school at one point in time so I knew it was okay for me to take them.”
Ryan says he understands the risks of self-medicating. “I should have gone to a doctor instead of self-medicating,” he says.
Yet, antidepressants such as Buspar, Celexa, Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin and Zoloft are available on the Internet for people who want to buy them.
The risks are high, though, Shah says. “Medications should never be prescribed by a doctor who hasn’t seen or regularly sees the patient,” Shah says. “Never take medication without asking your doctor.”
Another problem Shah sees with ordering medication over the Internet is that the quality of the drug is unknown, he says.
Patients may be tempted to self-medicate rather than have medication changes by guidance of a physician, he says.
“The biggest problem would be if a person makes medication decisions without the support of their doctor with any medication,” Shah says. “I would much rather someone stop taking their medication with my help safely rather than lie to me and tell me they are still taking them.”
Psychiatrists are not the only doctors who may be able to prescribe antidepressants in the future, says Kaufman.
“Psychologists are now pushing for the ability to prescribe prescriptions,” he says.
Other states have already allocated the new laws allowing psychologists to prescribe medication to patients, and Tennessee’s psychologists are now waiting on their turn, Kaufman says. Antidepressants do help, he says, but other ways of therapy can be more effective.
“For all the studies, the talking cure is more effective long term than is medicine,” he says.
There are new drugs that are made available each year, 68 in 2004, Kaufman says. “Some people look at them as a wonder drug and they aren’t,” he says.
But, there are other ways of treating depression without medication. There are treatments like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy that have been used on patients for two years, and studies are recently showing that they work.
EMDR Therapy is a new treatment that has been around for a while, Kaufman says.
“It has to do with treatment where they are working with eye movement responses to things,” he says, “Literature shows that it can be very helpful with victims of trauma.

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