Anti-depressants Only 15% Effective

Another report yet again shows the inefficacy of psychotropic drugs like Zoloft, Lexapro, and Prozac . From the Post Millennial:

Evidence is increasing that doctors are overprescribing SSRIs, according to the outlet. One recent study cited by Newsweek revealed that only 15 percent of patients derive any more benefit from the drugs than they would a sugar pill. Additionally, withdrawal symptoms for long-term users may be more severe than previously believed and sometimes be worse for the patient than the original disorder....

The consensus is that SSRIs help some people with severe depression, but those patients are the minority of people who take the drugs....

Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London, the lead author of the serotonin paper told the outlet, "We have a mistaken view of what psychiatric drugs are doing. This idea that they work by targeting the underlying biological mechanisms that produce the symptoms of mental disorders is actually not supported by evidence for any type of mental disorder, whether that's depression or schizophrenia or whatever..."

After the paper was released, the US Food and Drug Administration published an analysis of all the antidepressant clinical trial data in its files. The study concluded that the active ingredients in 10 of the most popularly prescribed antidepressant medications made a meaningful difference in only 15 percent of the patients who took them, usually in those patients suffering from the most severe depression.

According to Newsweek, One reason may be that SSRIs are effective for many people not because of the drug but rather the placebo effect, that the patient creates an expectation of healing that results in improvement. The outlet cited research that the placebo effect is successful in 30 to 40 percent of cases of depression.

End quote.

~The Post Millennial

The Newsweek article cited is here and here are the key quotes:

One of the authors of the new study is Horowitz, now a research scientist at University College London. His July paper, "The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence," is aimed squarely at debunking the basis upon which pharmaceutical companies marketed drugs like Prozac, Lexapro and Zoloft to consumers for decades: namely, the idea that depression is associated with deficits in the concentrations or activity of the brain chemical serotonin.

The pharmaceutical industry used that idea to market the drugs to consumers for many years, and it remains a kind of shorthand some doctors use to explain to their patients how the drugs work. As a result, according to the study's authors, between 85 and 90 percent of the public believe that low serotonin levels cause depression. After reviewing data from previous studies involving hundreds of thousands of individuals, Horowitz and his colleagues concluded that there is little to no evidence that this is true....

Horowitz and the paper's other co-authors have been using the attention to call for a fundamental reassessment of how mental illness is treated. "We have a mistaken view of what psychiatric drugs are doing," says Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London. She is also Horowitz's boss and the lead author of the serotonin paper. "This idea that they work by targeting the underlying biological mechanisms that produce the symptoms of mental disorders is actually not supported by evidence for any type of mental disorder, whether that's depression or schizophrenia or whatever," she told Newsweek....

The crippling sadness that sometimes follows a reduction in SSRI medication is caused by the chemical dependence the drugs can cause in the brain and withdrawal effects.

"It's not helpful to think of depression as a brain disease," she says. "I think that we should be thinking of it as an emotional reaction to life circumstances and life events. And indeed, there is very strong evidence that people who suffer from adverse life events are much more likely to get depressed."

End quote.