Systemic review of antidepressants vs placebo commentary

michael_b

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/pdf/zfp_222_3_128.pdf

The background on this story is a community of science people found a bunch of unpublished studies that, when weighed with the studies which supported antidepressant approval, showed they were no more effective than placebo in mild-moderate cases.

Except unlike placebo, antidepressants express a wider range of severe side effects, like worsening depression and suicide.

Isn't this a scandal? How do psychiatrists still prescribe these en masse?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/pdf/zfp_222_3_128.pdf

Except unlike placebo, antidepressants express a wider range of severe side effects, like worsening depression and suicide.

Isn't this a scandal? How do psychiatrists still prescribe these en masse?

That's more useful information.

That's significant at a 99% interval with a two-tailed test, so that's significant as far as I'm concerned. (I kept misreading that, and my first three or four calculations with that were assuming 22/37 placebo tests were guessing "Antidepressant" instead of "placebo", so it took an inordinate amount of time to get there. Did the same thing reading the abstract, actually. Teach me to read more carefully.)