Posted by SLS on January 15, 2007, at 21:06:12
In reply to Re: long-term stimulant AD use » SLS, posted by psychobot5000 on January 15, 2007, at 20:10:50
> > Doctors don't use amphetamine monotherapy to treat MDD and BD because it doesn't work. It tends not to bring one to remission and keep them there for more than a week or two. It is not the best kept secret in psychiatry that it does. It is not some long-lost piece of knowledge that the most dedicated of researchers have neglected to revisit.
> Many patients in this community seem to find stimulants very useful in the long term, after all
I certainly don't profess to read every post (I wish I could), but I don't recall anyone ever saying that they attained remission on stimulant monotherapy. But then again, I don't think I've seen anyone try it. I see lots of people using Adderall in combination with other drugs, though.
> --and we tend to be very treatment resistant.
Yes. Point well taken. That's why it is difficult to debate the efficacy of drugs based upon the historical experiences of people on Psycho-Babble. Antidepressants work. You might not know it from reading the posts on PB, but they do. I base my opinion on the whole as I have come to know it, and not on the relatively small community of treatment-resistant cases that we have here. I would rather take hope from the whole than hopelessness from the minority. Sometimes the difference between the two is the luck of choosing the right drugs in the sequence of trial and error, rather than a lack in the existence of an effective treatment.
My only motivation at this point for proposing the inferiority of amphetamine as monotherapy in MDD and BD is to save people time and possible frustration and discouragement. However, I wouldn't want to have someone skip over a possibly effective treatment based upon something that I had to say. So...
I don't think this is worth debating any further. Anything more would probably just be an academic exercise. I would not discourage anyone from trying amphetamine monotherapy if that is what has been decided as being the next step. Trial and error, right? There are plenty of questions one could ask about what are the parameters of a fair trial of amphetamine. How much? How long? I have my own ideas, but I'll let the experts chime in first.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:721931
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070113/msgs/722721.html