The recent top 10 anti-depressants list is the most searched item currently on this blog. So the following should be of interest to many. Prospect magazine recently featured article The Drugs Don’t Work The article looks at Irvine Kirsch’s crusade to challenge the establishment by questioning whether anti-depressants are any better than placebo.
Kirsch has set out to challenge the antidepressant establishment. He claims that the SSRIs only appear to be effective because patients believe that they are going to work. “It’s placebo effect,” says Kirsch. In other words, the SSRIs are no better than blood-letting, snake oil, or any of the nostrums peddled before the era of modern medicine. Of course we all use placebos in everyday life, from kissing a child’s bruise better to taking a glass of brandy for a cold. I know a woman who saves red Smarties in a jar and takes one when she has a headache; she swears that it works even though she’s conscious that it’s placebo. Yet one would not want to build a health strategy for depression on such flimsy efficacy.
Source: Prospect
