Antidepressants

Andrew: Admitting and talking to the doctor about it and him saying, ‘You know what, just what you’re telling me is - you’re depressed, you know, and a lot of these thoughts you’re having are just because you’re depressed.’ Fantastic, that was a good conversation and the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and the citalopram that I’m on have been fantastic.

Sonia: I guess I would advise anyone to find out what the side effects are because some of them aren’t bearable [um] and it, it is very different for everyone, whilst someone might get, you know, horrendous side effects on fluoxetine another person might not get any at all  [um] and you have to kind of think, you have to really think hard is it going to be worth it [um] because if you’re incredibly, you know, if you’re at the lowest point you can possibly be the side effects are probably worth it, if you’re mildly depressed they’re probably not going to be.

Stuart:  I think drugs are always, always worth trying and from my experiences they work very differently for different people and you can’t tell until you’ve started taking the drugs what they’re going to do for you, you can’t tell what the therapeutic effect is going to be, you can’t say what side effects you’re going to get if any.

Melanie: You know, I have heard people have said when they’ve taken antidepressants that they go all fluffy and they don’t really know what they’re saying and what they’re doing and I didn’t really want to be like that So to be honest when I did get my first prescription I read the leaflet inside, front and back, to make sure I knew exactly what could happen to me.

How did you do the research?

Well for these types of projects, we aim to talk to as wide a range of different people as we can so that we can capture all kinds of different experiences. Because particularly with something like antidepressants, they do affect people in different ways, and people have different ideas and values and beliefs about taking medication. So what we've tried to do is capture as much of those different views as we can.

We try to interview people in their homes as far as possible, because that makes them feel more comfortable. And it's easier, I think, for people to be able to open up and talk about very personal issues when they're in their own space. So we travel around the country and we visit the people in their own homes and talk to them at length. And it really is quite humbling to go and turn up on somebody's doorstep that you've never met before. And within half an hour to be talking to them about such personal issues.

Why do you think people wanted to share their experiences?

People really do want to talk about their experiences and to share them with other people. And I think that's the motivation that a lot of people have for taking part in our projects. The understanding that it's really useful and important to be able to share those experiences with other people, and a lot of people that we talk to hope that the things that they tell us will be of use to other people, will make them think or help them to make decisions or to just find out more information about the medication that they may have been prescribed.

Why do you think this project is important?

There are a lot of conflicting views about mental health, about the prescribing of antidepressants and I think people generally want more information about them when they get prescribed. I mean, we know that there's been a huge increase in the numbers of prescriptions over recent years. And I think this website gives the backstory to that, that once somebody has got that prescription in their hand what happens next? One of my participants talked about being quite concerned about taking medicines for the mind, and that he, you know, had no idea what would happen to him when he took them. So I think that's a general feeling that people have. And so by looking at this website and hearing and seeing other people talking about how it affected them, I think it's going to be really useful for people.