The Placebo effect is commonly used in human testing. Researchers use this method to help them understand what effect a new drug or some other treatment might have on a particular condition. The participants may not know what method they are receiving or may be lead to believe that all participants are all receiving the same thing while in turn half of them would be receiving a fake or placebo. When it comes to medication a placebo is often nothing but a sugar pill. This allows research’s to monitor its true effect and not just the persons expectations. If a person expects a pill to do something, then it is possible that the body’s own chemistry can cause effects similar to what a medication might have caused.
Antidepressant drugs are not fully understood today and there are still many questions on the topic. It draws concern to me because of the increasing number of people taking anxiety or antidepressant medications. Who is to say we are feeling too sad or grieving for too long over a situation we are not happy about? It takes time to recover and it takes time to heal. We don’t need a medication to try and fix that. Maybe we should just try excepting it and stop turning away from the idea of talk therapy. I feel like people shy away and feel looked down upon for seeing a counselor but it is really nothing to be ashamed of.
Drug treatment for antidepressants were developed thanks to animal testing. An article from animal research studies states, “It is believed that in depression not enough of these chemicals are available and antidepressant drugs act to increase their levels in the brain”. It is believed, not proven. There is no diagnoses for depression and anxiety and there is no test that can be run to prove that you have it. There are many different medications offered but it is difficult to predict how well a particular medication will help an individual.
From the book spark I found research that has studied the brain and how exercise effects it. Spark brings together many research topics that are done on animals and people. This research has proven that exercise has the ability and is just as effect as anxiety and depression medication. Can exercise help all people? The answer is probably no but for many it has made a difference and many times working on being physically active can dramatically change your brain chemistry. It is noted that, “about a third of patients with depression achieve full remission of their symptoms with antidepressants”. The word cure is never used when talking about depression because we only have subjective measures for behavior and emotions. Experiments on lab rats have shown improvements in brain chemistry when they exercise. People and animals need to move and it is because we are moving less and less that these disorders are becoming more and more common. A research article posted from Duke University in October 2000 made the New York Times with a study showing that exercise is better than Zoloft for treating depression. Too bad we don’t market it differently, “If exercise came in a pill form, it would be plastered across the front page, hailed as the blockbuster drug of the century”.