This week (7/15/05), the British Medical Journal published a new appraisal of antidepressant studies, saying that antidepressants don't really provide much benefit, after all. Recent studies range from saying that antidepressant medications work on 80% of people down to 30%, which is about the same as placebos.
Currently, medical malpractice law requires doctors to prescribe antidepressants. This standard of practice might change if U.S. studies showed that antidepressants were really no better than placebos. Therefore, I wouldn't expect to see many studies saying that.
Unfortunately, the ongoing debate about antidepressants simply reflects the usual academic and ideological struggles within the professional psychiatric and psychological communities...one side proclaiming that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, and is treatable by medication... while the other side proclaims that depression is caused by psychological problems stemming from childhood events, and that medication merely interferes with the process of resolving inner conflicts.
This new British article is the latest from the humanistic psychology camp. Expect some new neurochemistry support for medication in the next issue of JAMA.
Personally I find these febrile and reactive salvos to be... well... depressing. It seems intuitively obvious to me that that brain chemistry and consciousness are tied up with each other in a complex manner, and that neither is causative. So that solutions to problems of depression need to involve both.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies, under pressure to produce more products, are busily working on the next generation of antidepressants. The new drugs that will prevent the reuptake of not only serotonin, but dopamine and norepinephrine, as well. They are expected to be more effective.
Surprisingly, we already have an antidepressant that does that. It's called St. John's Wort.
About the Author:
William Prescott is a health researcher and author. |
