"What is not in doubt is that in high-quality, large, double-blind trials, antidepressants make a lot of people feel better."

Technically true, but so does any sugar-pill you want to claim is an antidepressant.

The only area where trials established that they were more than faith-healing was for extremely severe depression. Merely being severely depressed or less didn't cut it.

Among the conspiracy cranks who claim this are those wingnuts over at Scientific American reporting on the findings of those kooks at the Journal of the American Medical Association.

" Although the superiority of antidepressants over placebos has been shown to be statistically significant, the observed differences are not clinically significant. In fact, the average difference between drug and placebo is approximately two points on a depression scale that ranges from 0 to 52. This difference does not exceed the commonly accepted standard for a minimally significant clinical improvement of a 3 point improvement on the depression scale."

So they don't meet the bare minimum to qualify as having an effect in use.

The only problem lies in harnessing their significant placebo effect. Some argue risking the significant side effect including impacted foetuses and dead teenagers. Other more moderate types suggest getting the same benefits AS sugar pills FROM sugar pills.

If you would care to cite any studies refuting the meta-analysis by the JAMA please do so.

But be careful. Those tin-foil-hat wearing types at the New England Journal of Medicine found that Big Pharma was cooking the books in selectively sending positive results of trials to the FDA.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa065779

Dante







• ( http link ) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antidepressants-do-they-work-or-dont-they/
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