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Major New Study Confirms Antidepressants Really Do Work (theguardian.com)
According to authors of a groundbreaking study, antidepressants really do work in treating depression, though some are more effective than others. "Millions more people around the world should be prescribed pills or offered talking therapies, which work equally well for moderate to severe depression, say the doctors, noting that just one in six people receive proper treatment in the rich world -- and one in 27 in the developing world," reports The Guardian. From the report: "Antidepressants are an effective tool for depression. Untreated depression is a huge problem because of the burden to society," said Andrea Cipriani of the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, who led the study. The debate over antidepressants has unfortunately often been ideological, said Cipriani. Some doctors and patients have doubts over whether they work at all and point to the big placebo effect -- in trials, those given dummy pills also improve to some degree. Some people suspect drug companies of fiddling trial results. Some patients simply do not want to take pills for a mental health condition. The study published in the Lancet took six years, Cipriani said, and included all the published and unpublished data that the scientists could find. It was carried out by a team of international experts. They looked at results after eight weeks of more than 500 trials involving either a drug versus placebo or comparing two different medicines. The most famous antidepressant of them all, Prozac -- now out of patent and known by its generic name, fluoxetine -- was one of the least effective but best tolerated, measured by a low drop-out rate in the trials or fewer side-effects reported. The most effective of the drugs was amitriptyline, which was the sixth best tolerated.
Only 2% of studies showing antidepressants aren't effective get published:
https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe
This is a meta-analysis. Back when I was in grad school, we'd throw these in the garbage. You cannot account for controls across tens of studies, much less hundreds of studies. Unless the authors legitimately did a replication study writing before the meta-analysis, they're next to useless.
Beware of things that say things are confirmed without a doubt. Doubt is essential in all things involving science and research. You must continually doubt your axioms and question things; replication the true you think you know to be true.
https://khanism.org/science/doubt/
I know for me personally, anti-depressants were awful. The side effects were bad and I never liked taking them. I feel like regular behavioral therapy and talking with a good psychologist who'd help me see my options and my negative ways of thinking helped significantly more than anything else.
That being said, I know they help some people too, either real of placebo, with major depression. Doctor's are afraid to try therapy without drugs because of the liability if the patient harms themselves. I think this is really sad and that these drugs are way over prescribed. It's a tough issue to balance, but claiming crap like this study does (which is probably funded by the industry anyway) just leads to more confirmation bias and less incentive to come up with more effective treatments.
These researchers didn't see a single patient.
All they did was put a bunch of studies on a pile and say: hey...this is significant.
For anyone reading the comments, you should listen to your doctor and trust your experiences. There are different types of depression, and the stigma that you can see prevalent in these comments that you should 'just stop being sad' is a plague in of itself. I am bipolar, and spent the majority of my life being a useless piece of shit who would wake up one day and start training to be an engineer and fall asleep that night alone under a bridge trying to kill myself. I would miss a bus and decide that was a sign that I was a failure in life. None of this is normal, and none of it was my fault. It is a genetic condition, and I spent years telling myself the medication would be a crutch that would make it worse, and that I was strong enough to 'do it on my own'. I didn't want to be one of these pathetic people that everyone talks about.
But then I found a job I loved, and I didn't want to ruin it like I had so many times before. I decided to get help. I saw a doctor. I started seeing a therapist. I started taking my medications. I wake up now and take my pills and sometimes I forget how hard life used to be, and I can never say enough how amazing it is to be in that position. Not everyone will find the right combination of medications. Maybe your therapist or doctor sucks. Keep fighting. Get a new one. Ignore these trolls who don't struggle the way we struggle and keep pushing yourself.
There are communities out there to support, help, and guide you. Become a part of those communities and don't let the ignorance of the masses tell you that you can't get better. If you are still reading this, the odds are that you have a voice in the back of your mind that keeps tell you that, anyway.
Taking a pill *helps* you to "face the pain". It gives you the motivation to make changes in your life that depressed-you would never have gotten around to do. That is why professionals recommend a combination of pills and therapy as the most effective treatment for depression.
Sometimes I get afraid that people thinks science is magic. It isn't. That people think there are wast conspiracies everywhere. There aren't.
You say you want a vaccine. That indicates you have no idea what a vaccine is. And you want it for something we still don't know how it works _but_ we know is a spectra of different symptoms that require a spectra of drugs to be chosen for a certain individual/patient. You don't realize how medical science works instead claiming things that
This is beyond stupid. You are requesting something that wouldn't work (vaccine) for something we still don't know enough about (depression) to do something magical (become real) and the fact magic doesn't work is an indication of a major conspiracy.
I don't think you need antidepressants, your condition requires another kind of medication.
What I rarely see in these studies is comparing the outcomes with other things, like aerobic exercise. There have a been a couple of studies that showed at least for mild depression, aerobic exercise was just as effective as an anti-depressant or talk therapy. Even more so for folks who joined groups.
So, for the price of a pair of great running shoes ($150) you saved a lot of money and time. One session with a therapist will cost you the price of a pair of running shoes and running doesn't have those pesky side effects that anti-depressants have - like somnolence, weight gain, sexual dysfunction......
At creating basket-cases who like to go on mass-murdering sprees, that's for sure.
Antidepressants should be banned.
I have been a pharmacist for many years.
Pharmaceutical companies funding fake scientific journals to create the "look and feel of a peer-reviewed publication to serve as a marketing tool" or to elicit favorable study results is a far more common problem then you think...
https://www.the-scientist.com/...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Physicians prescribing medications because they are getting kickbacks from the pharmaceutics companies is nothing new either...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
And hell, your prescription coverage employs a formulary that is driven just as choosing drugs because they provide cost savings as it is by scientific data showing greater efficacy.
Science isn't magic but neither are scientists omnipotent grand wizards fighting for the side of good. They are just as corruptible as anyone else on this planet. Corporations are still driven by profit above all other concerns, even ones that are staffed by research scientists.
Blind faith in "science" (technology) is just as dangerous, if not more so, then blind faith in religion. Skepticism is a cornerstone of scientific inquiry. If you aren't practicing it, your doing it wrong.
It comes down to what an addiction is..... if you can't sleep at night because you are pacing the room and panicking about the type of daily events that most other people would just forget about, and you take a pill that makes it stop... are you addicted because you don't want to go back to that again??
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Being truly depressed is like being in a dark place you can't get out of. You get a new job, but it is still there. You exercise, but it is still there. If it's an anxiety-type, then it can keep you up all night worrying about things that don't matter. You tell yourself that it doesn't matter, but it doesn't make a difference because your brain goes to that dark place and it doesn't make a difference. It's like trying to will yourself out of having a headache.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Quote from the actual study:
"We excluded quasi-randomised trials and trials that were incomplete or included 20% or more of participants with bipolar disorder, psychotic depression, or treatment-resistant depression". (emphasis mine)
So yeah, it works, unless it doesn't, in which case we'll exclude those instances. No true Scotsman indeed.