What did everyone think of this article?

[rayo de sol]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/he...06depress.html

Some widely prescribed drugs for depression provide relief in extreme cases but are no more effective than placebo pills for most patients, according to a new analysis released Tuesday.

[mama_Agnieszka]

Originally Posted by rayo de sol

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/he...06depress.html

While I hope that research like this is used to enhance the medicines that exist for depression, I'm not too crazy with the interpretation that antidepressants are just "placebos"... It's just a bit too disrespectful of the hundreds and thousands of women who take the medications and feel better and have their lives back (I'm one of those) to say, oh, you're just taking a sugar pill... It's no different than telling a severely depressed person that "it's all in (your) head"... So, what I would take from that article would be just that research needs to continue into what antidepressants actually do and how they work, and how to improve them.

[thefragile7393]

I find it hard to believe. While I don't think antidepressants are right for everyone (i'm generally anti-psych anything, although I myself am on meds...I know, weird) I do believe they are NOT placebos in anyone. I do believe they help some, and not others...and that they are overprescribed for anything and everything but that's not necessarily something for this forum. But no.....these drugs do stuff to your brain, good and bad (for some) and they aren't placebos in the least. Poor science yet again.

[JennTheMomma]

I think it's an interesting article. Just like with anything, it works for some, not for others. I didn't take any medications when I had PPD. Medications just don't sit well with me, but I think they are great for those who they do work for.

[GoestoShow]

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Edited by GoestoShow - 1/4/11 at 9:07am

[annekh23]

It's not the first piece of research or the first article suggesting this, though so far I've only seen this kind of thing in relation to SSRIs.

Personally, I'm not bothered if something works due to placebo effect, provided it's not causing significant side effects, I'd be bothered if a doctor told me I needed to stop breastfeeding to take a medication which it turned out was probably only helping for that reason.

However, with depression (and probably other illnesses too), if you take part in a double blind study and you don't get better, or get worse, you get dropped from the study because regardless of whether you're getting the drug or the placebo you need something different, so by the end of the study, there is a risk you end up comparing two groups that are no longer matched.

There is definitely a place for such studies, but it's all about how you interpret the results, because "no better than placebo" doesn't mean encourage doctors not to prescribe, it's got to be "no better than doing nothing" for that to be the recommendation.

My PPD has been severe (as it was the other time), so according to these studies SSRIs should work, but depending on which one I've tried it's either made no difference, or even made things worse. It's frustrating for me that SSRIs are so popular that most doctors I've worked with spend a long time increasing doses or switching to another SSRI when another antidepressant would be better.