Tag: antidepressant and placebo

The promotion of SSRI antidepressant use began with the pharmaceutical industry and occurs despite evidence that these drugs are harmful, not helpful, in children and adolescents.

A recent meta-analysis published in Molecular Psychiatry claims to have settled the debate on whether the slight superiority of antidepressants in trials is due to side effects breaking blind. The principle author was quoted as saying: "once and for all, we've answered the SSRI question." Have they?

Surveyed doctors overestimate pharmacological effects of antidepressants and underestimate placebo effects.

This study reinforces a large body of evidence suggesting that an individual’s expectancies for improvement significantly contribute to their actual improvement. The importance of expectancies is worth paying attention to now as more clients, clinicians, and researchers are endorsing a reductionist view of psychological disorders -- i.e., that psychological disorders are fundamentally brain disorders.

A new article in The Medical Journal of Australia laments that, while antidepressant use continues to climb, the research evidence shows that their effectiveness...