theaveragejoeSenior Contributor
Medication for Depression
I like to read quite a bit on all topics to do with Mental Disorders.
One thing that really interests me, and I am not here going to take any sides but simply investigate the topic, is that many mental health professionals believe that medication for depression does not work.
An example, and there are many out there, is Mark Hyman, a Doctor and a writer, and he writes:
" Here is some depressing recent medical news: Antidepressants don't work. What is even more depressing is that the pharmaceutical industries ... have deliberately deceived us into believing that they do."
In 2009 to 2010 a large scale research was conducted in America where the researchers subpoenaed the US government to release all of the studies on antidepressants' effectiveness in its archives. (Linford and Harden, 2009). What was found was that there were many studies disputing the hypothesis that anti depressants are more effective than placebos. More interesting, research papers in favour of the positive effects of antidepressants were twelve times more likely to be published than studies reporting negative effects which were much greater in numbers.
Turner et. al (2008) looking at the study of Dr Irvan Kirsh, of Harvard University, concluded that: "Publication' bias had inflated the common impression of the effectiveness of serotonin reuptake inhibitors by about a third overall; and for some medication, the figures were twice as high. Post Turner estimates of the effects of antidepressants have dropped to a level close to that of placebo (Liinford and Harden (2009). Dr Kirsh used the Freedom of Information Act to get access to the studies that did not show any effect in real scientific terms which made up the great majority of the research. America had some proof that antidepressants were not as effective as the manipulated papers had suggested. Most of the research in favour of antidepressants had been manipulated, or, in other words, corruption was at work to make money and to sell drugs.
In other words, the large scale research, still valid today, tells us that there is absolutely no concrete proof, in scientific terms, that antidepressants actually work on the brain, in any positive way, except that the placebo may be at work. Placebo is the simple belief that the medication is helping when it is really not. In other words those with depression could be taking sugar pills without knowing it with a lablel "Antidepressants" and it could still work for some.
As I said, I take no side, but it is a very interesting topic, I feel. MOre interesting is the subject of Placebo and how do we know when the medication is working or when it is the Placebo effect working? IN cases where the Placebo effect is at work, it is clear that it is really the mind healing itself under the belief that a certain substance, which is just sugar, is doing the work. If this is so how powerful is the Placebo and why and how does the mind heal itself? More allarmingly is the fact that many pharmaceutical corporations are moving away from making drugs for mental disorder and going into other less expensive areas such as diabetes, and so on.
