Antidepressants Don’t Work – A new study has found that antidepressants are little better than a placebo for all but the most severe cases of depression.
“For patients with very severe depression, the medication did have a potent effect,” the study’s lead author tells WebMD.
But in the vast majority of cases studied, the effects “were pretty small or nonexistent for patients with mild or moderate depression or even into the severe range.”
The scientific review looked at six studies, which looked at two drugs: “paroxetine”, the active ingredient in Paxil and Seroxat—which works on the same principle as the drugs used in Zoloft and Prosac—and “impramine”, an older drug used in Trofranil.
For about 70% of patients, neither drug will have a significant effect, the researchers concluded, noting dryly that this is “not reflected in the implicit messages present in the marketing of these medications.”
In the analysis, published in the Journal of the American Medical Assocation, researchers led by Jay Fournier at the University of Pennsylvania found that antidepressant drugs helped only those patients with the most severe depression.
Most drug trials already excluded patients with milder forms of the disorder, the authors said, increasing the likelihood of even more people taking antidepressants that have no significant effect.
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