Let's Not Get Carried Away: Anti-Depressants Really Do Help People

Long story short:

Studies said the glass was 40% full. Hype led people to think it was close to 100% full. New re-analysis of the data leads to the conclusion that the glass is really 30% full. The hype train responds by deciding that the glass must really be 100% empty.

The moral of the story is that we should listen to Flavor Flav: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK8sxngSWaU

Regardless of whether anti-depressants are effectual, overprescribed, or totally useless: I think it's amazing that an article arguing the merits of a pharmaceutical treatment can be published without reference to any research.

>But that, of course, doesn't mean that antidepressants are dummy pills that have no real effect; and it's crucial that depressives--many of whom are suspicious of medication--realize that.

I think the author subscribes to an outmoded view of the placebo effect and doesn't acknowledge the mind's remarkable capacity to trigger real physical changes in the body. Antidepressants can be 'dummy pills' and still have a real effect.

Because the submitted article mentions back-and-forth about placebo effects, quoting some researchers on the issue, perhaps I should share here some links that are helpful for understanding what placebo effects are all about. Some of these online links cite quite a few useful scholarly publications.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/michael-specte...

"In other words, the best research we have strongly suggests that placebo effects are illusions, not real physiological effects. The possible exception to this are the subjective symptoms of pain and nausea, where the placebo effects are highly variable and may be due to subjective reporting."

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/angells-review...

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-rise-and-fa...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effect...

http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/revisiting-dan...

"I'd tried everything I could think of to cure myself (cutting out alcohol, cutting out caffeine, practicing better "sleep hygiene," melatonin, etc.); nothing had worked. "

What about exercise? I'm not here to give an opinion one way or the other about the benefits of anti-depressants, or what would work for this particular individual, but I think far far too often people over-look the tremendous health benefits of regular exercise and eating right. Not saying it's a cure all/catch all, one stop fix. I just see it being overlooked far too often. Wanna sleep good, exercise hard for a few days, the endorphins it helps produce works wonders on the brain too.

Of course those drugs have their place. They should be used for quick interventions before people get cured by proper therapies. Unfortunately there is so much money in just keeping people on those drugs that just popping pills is offered as alternative solution as well.

Then after 2-3 years when one kind of drug doesn't work anymore you get the next one. The problem are not the drugs, the problem are the people prescribing them and people looking for a quick fix for their problems by taking pills instead of doing a proper therapy.