-
About
Our Story
back- Our Mission
- Our Leadership
- Accessibility
- Careers
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
- Learning Science
- Sustainability
Our Solutions
back
-
Community
Community
back- Newsroom
- Discussions
- Webinars on Demand
- Digital Community
- The Institute at Macmillan Learning
- English Community
- Psychology Community
- History Community
- Communication Community
- College Success Community
- Economics Community
- Institutional Solutions Community
- Nutrition Community
- Lab Solutions Community
- STEM Community
- Newsroom
- Macmillan Community
- :
- Psychology Community
- :
- Psychology Blog
- :
- Antidepressants: An Emperor with No Clothes?
Antidepressants: An Emperor with No Clothes?
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
On rare occasion, I have reported startling findings that challenge current wisdom: Brain training games do NOT boost intelligence. Traumatic experiences are NOT often repressed. Seasonal affective disorder (wintertime blues) is NOT widespread.
The just-arrived lectures from the 2016 Bial Symposium on Placebo Effects, Healing and Meditation, offers another shocker: In an update on his meta-analyses, Irving Kirsch concludes that antidepressant drug effects are close to nil.
Here’s Kirsch’s gist: Many, many studies, including unpublished drug trials made available by the FDA, consistently show that
- Antidepressants work. They produce clinically significant benefits (using a standard depression scale).
- Placebos work, too. In two large meta-analyses, placebos produced 82 percent of the antidepressant effect. Moreover, “the difference between drug and placebo is . . . so small that clinicians cannot detect it.”
- Side effects can “unblind” a drug. The statistically (but not clinically) detectable drug effect may be attributable to antidepressants’ detectable side effects.
- The FDA only counts “successful trials.” Kirsch reports that despite meager evidence of antidepressant efficacy, the drugs gain approval because of a stunning FDA policy—which ignores trials that find no drug effect and reports only successful trials.
- “All antidepressant drugs seem to be equally effective.” As one would expect from a placebo effect, the benefits of various antidepressant drugs are “exactly the same regardless of type of drug.” Various serotonin-increasing drugs relieve depression, but so does a drug that decreases serotonin! “What do you call pills, the effects of which are independent of their chemical composition?,” asks Kirsch. “I call them ‘placebos.’”
Given that antidepressants work, even if they are hardly more than active placebos, what’s a clinician to recommend? Kirsch notes three considerations:
- Antidepressants have side effects, which can include sexual dysfunction, weight gain, insomnia, and diarrhea.
- Antidepressant use increases the risk of relapse after recovery.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy, acupuncture, and physical exercise also effectively treat depression.
Ergo, “When different treatments are equally effective, choice should be based on risk and harm, and of all of these treatments, antidepressant drugs are the riskiest and most harmful. If they are to be used at all, it should be as a last resort.”
But surely this is not the last word. Stay tuned for more findings and debate.
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.
-
Abnormal Psychology
19 -
Achievement
3 -
Affiliation
1 -
Behavior Genetics
2 -
Cognition
40 -
Consciousness
35 -
Current Events
28 -
Development Psychology
19 -
Developmental Psychology
34 -
Drugs
5 -
Emotion
55 -
Evolution
3 -
Evolutionary Psychology
5 -
Gender
19 -
Gender and Sexuality
7 -
Genetics
12 -
History and System of Psychology
6 -
History and Systems of Psychology
7 -
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
51 -
Intelligence
8 -
Learning
70 -
Memory
39 -
Motivation
14 -
Motivation: Hunger
2 -
Nature-Nurture
7 -
Neuroscience
47 -
Personality
29 -
Psychological Disorders and Their Treatment
22 -
Research Methods and Statistics
107 -
Sensation and Perception
46 -
Social Psychology
132 -
Stress and Health
55 -
Teaching and Learning Best Practices
59 -
Thinking and Language
18 -
Virtual Learning
26
- « Previous
- Next »