Depression and its medical
treatment
The effectiveness of Antidepressant drugs
A recent
study:
Initial
severity and antidepressant benefits: A meta-analysis of data
submitted
to the Food
and Drug Administration
by Kirsch I,
Deacon, B.J, Huedo-Medina T.B, Scoboria A, Moore T.J, and
Johnson B.T
Published in PLoS
Medicine, February 2008
URL:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045
has found
"Irving Kirsch and
colleagues used Freedom of Information legislation in the United
States
(see the
methods section) to get access to both published and
unpublished clinical
trials of several
SSRI/SNRI antidepressants, including fluoxetine (Prozac), that
had been
submitted to the Food
and Drug Administration for approval. Analyzing the full
dataset,
which included
studies of varying duration and quality, the researchers found
no clinically
significant difference between a patient’s response to
the placebo and
these antidepressants
for most depressed people.Their analysis did find clinically
relevant
effects for a subset
of the most severely depressed patients." (1)
So much for evidence
based medicine.
Professor Kirsch's
comments can be seen on the ABC's program "All in the Mind"
what a mind blowing
program.
It just adds weight to
the name of this web site:
headbacktohealth.com The main issue being your have
to use your own
head/brain to work out what makes sense in terms of your health.
The more information you
gather the better.
It would seem that the
truth about treatments always comes out eventually. Patients as
health care
consumers need to search
out all of the facts. Professor Kirsch deserves the gratitude of all
patients
not just those on
antidepressants. His group's work points the way to get at the truth
behind some of
these very popular
treatments that have government sanctions as effective.
Other podcasts of
interest are:
Hear what Professor
Kirsch had to say on "All in the Mind" broadcast 23 May 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/allinthemind&d=rn/allinthemind/audio&r=aim
_23052009_2856.ram&w=aim_23052009_28M.asx&t=23%20May%202009&p=1
http://download.guardian.co.uk/audio/1204550654696/7794/gdn.sci.bg.080303.science_weekly.mp3
When you first start
this one up, you may think it is a dud link. Be patient they
come through eventually.
References
1)
http://www.plos.org/cms/node/33