Wow, Prozac is just a bunch of sugar pills

[tikistitch]

Anti-depressants' 'little effect'

New generation anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients, research suggests.

A University of Hull team concluded the drugs actively help only a small group of the most severely depressed.

Marjorie Wallace, head of the mental health charity Sane, said that if these results were confirmed they could be "very disturbing".

....

The researchers accept many people believe the drugs do work for them, but argue that could be a placebo effect - people feel better simply because they are taking a medication which they think will help them.

In total, the Hull team, who published their findings in the journal PLoS Medicine, reviewed data on 47 clinical trials.

They reviewed published clinical trial data, and unpublished data secured under Freedom of Information legislation.

(Emphasis added.)

Reading between the lines in the new item (and, if you follow the link, you can also hear a guy with a very cute accent interview the study's primary author) they're alleging that drug companies tend to take studies that show their drugs aren't terribly effective and....kinda hide them in a file cabinet and forget them.

This is not completely a "ZOMG drug companies are EEEEVUL!" thing either - it's long been known that when scientists have a negative finding (ie, shit didn't work), they tend to let it all go down the Memory Hole. But, as this shows, studies that don't find anything are sometimes quite important.

Comments

[spazzygirl19.livejournal.com]

Check out this article from yesterday's L.A. Times Health section:

www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-antidepressants25feb25,1,7942842.story


It's details even 'stranger' things. Like how if that dude that killed all those people at Northern Illinois University, *wasn't* on Prozac to begin with -- then he wouldn't have 'reacted' to the drug and gone berserk.

Perhaps SSRIs don't do some people well, their doctors should be monitoring them more. Oh ... but the insurance companies want to pay as little as possible for whatever you have! However, I know many people that SSRIs have truly helped. Even on the lowest dose possible, and sometimes not even taking as long as the doctor thinks. Truly helpful.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

However, I know many people that SSRIs have truly helped.

What the study claims, though, if doctors gave those same people sugar pills and said, "Here, this will help," a lot of them - maybe even most of them - would have gotten better that way too.