How to view this from a Peat perspective?
from A. Sullivan's website
Happy Paralysis?
JUL 5 2014 @ 11:22AM
Taffy Brodesser-Akner reviews research by cosmetic dermatologist Eric Finzi, who investigates Botox as a treatment for depression:
In 2003, Finzi launched a small pilot study. He treated several subjects suffering from moderate to severe depression with Botox, paralyzing the muscles in their brows that create expressions of sadness, anger, and fear. The results were astonishing. Nine out of 10 patients reported a complete remission of their depression. … n May 2014, in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, Finzi published the results of a second, much larger study, this one double-blind and randomized, with the results co-authored with Dr. Norman Rosenthal, a professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School. (The project was also funded by Finzi’s clinic.) The study found a 47 percent reduction in scores on the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale among those injected with Botox. The members of the control group, who were injected with saline, exhibited a 20.6 percent reduction.
Brodesser-Akner decided to undergo the treatment herself, with mixed results:
As the weirdness subsided, I realized I wouldn’t characterize myself as less emotional with the Botox. I had the same emotions I’d always had; I just didn’t care about them. And then I wondered what this meant.
We are our feelings, after all. The rest is just blood and tissue. I felt diminished by feeling less deeply, and that, to me, was the most compelling result. We think that the opposite of depression is elation, but that isn’t exactly correct. Happy people don’t walk around ecstatic the way depressed people walk around sad. No, the opposite of depression is the absence of depression—and I suppose, in those terms, the Botox worked. I did experience an absence of depression. But Botox also took away other feelings, the ones we need to make us whole: joy, jealousy, frustration, triumph. Feeling leap-in-the-air excited—that was gone, too.
Surveying Finzi’s research back in March, psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman considered (NYT) its broader implications:
Whether Botox will prove to be an effective and useful antidepressant is as yet unclear. If it does prove effective, however, it will raise the intriguing epidemiological question of whether in administering Botox to vast numbers of people for cosmetic reasons, we might have serendipitously treated or prevented depression in a large number of them.
from A. Sullivan's website
Happy Paralysis?
JUL 5 2014 @ 11:22AM
Taffy Brodesser-Akner reviews research by cosmetic dermatologist Eric Finzi, who investigates Botox as a treatment for depression:
In 2003, Finzi launched a small pilot study. He treated several subjects suffering from moderate to severe depression with Botox, paralyzing the muscles in their brows that create expressions of sadness, anger, and fear. The results were astonishing. Nine out of 10 patients reported a complete remission of their depression. … n May 2014, in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, Finzi published the results of a second, much larger study, this one double-blind and randomized, with the results co-authored with Dr. Norman Rosenthal, a professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School. (The project was also funded by Finzi’s clinic.) The study found a 47 percent reduction in scores on the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale among those injected with Botox. The members of the control group, who were injected with saline, exhibited a 20.6 percent reduction.
Brodesser-Akner decided to undergo the treatment herself, with mixed results:
As the weirdness subsided, I realized I wouldn’t characterize myself as less emotional with the Botox. I had the same emotions I’d always had; I just didn’t care about them. And then I wondered what this meant.
We are our feelings, after all. The rest is just blood and tissue. I felt diminished by feeling less deeply, and that, to me, was the most compelling result. We think that the opposite of depression is elation, but that isn’t exactly correct. Happy people don’t walk around ecstatic the way depressed people walk around sad. No, the opposite of depression is the absence of depression—and I suppose, in those terms, the Botox worked. I did experience an absence of depression. But Botox also took away other feelings, the ones we need to make us whole: joy, jealousy, frustration, triumph. Feeling leap-in-the-air excited—that was gone, too.
Surveying Finzi’s research back in March, psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman considered (NYT) its broader implications:
Whether Botox will prove to be an effective and useful antidepressant is as yet unclear. If it does prove effective, however, it will raise the intriguing epidemiological question of whether in administering Botox to vast numbers of people for cosmetic reasons, we might have serendipitously treated or prevented depression in a large number of them.
