Study doubts effectiveness of antidepressant drugs

[Celebration]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7336571

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said on Monday.

Researchers led by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull reviewed a series of studies, both published and unpublished, on four antidepressants, examining the question of whether a person's response to these drugs hinged on how depressed they were before getting treatment.

They were Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac, also known as fluoxetine, Wyeth's Effexor, also called venlafaxine; GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil, also called Seroxat or paroxetine, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's drug Serzone, also called nefazodone, which it no longer markets in the United States.

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The researchers found that compared with placebo, these new-generation antidepressant medications did not yield clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially had moderate or even very severe depression. The study found that significant benefits occurred only in the most severely depressed patients.

[phylny]

1. I can tell you my personal experience.

A low dose of Lexapro has changed my life, and the life of one of my children. Neither of us had severe depression.

Unless I'm taking a sugar pill :rofl: