What? Antidepressants Don’t Work?

     Since the 1980s, placebo-based clinical trials of people taking antidepressants show that 85% of the participants fared no better from taking the antidepressants than from taking the placebo. Many researchers also say that the “improvement” reported by the remaining 15% is statistically insignificant.

     That’s because their self-reported “improvement” is only 2 points on a 52 point scale, not a high enough percentage to indicate the “effectiveness” the FDA looks for to approve the release of an antidepressant, assuming they have also deemed it “safe.”

     The FDA’s Black Box warnings for antidepressants today include suicidal ideation and behavior as an alert to the danger of these drugs. Can that be considered “safe”? There are now other warnings, as well, of the dangers of trying too quickly to discontinue taking antidepressants because of higher risk of suicide when trying to go cold turkey off them.

     Antidepressants cannot really be considered safe, can they?

     Now a new meta-analysis of data from all previous clinical trials for antidepressants seems to confirm that they are not effective either.

     The BMJ Journal has just published a Marc Stone study of 242 double-blind, placebo-controlled antidepressant trials from 1979 to 2016 involving 73,388 participants. Stone and his researchers confirmed the earlier findings of the statistically insignificant improvement of those taking antidepressants compared to those taking placebos.

     The difference for adults taking placebos versus antidepressants was only 1.75% on that 52 point scale. Remarkably, 84.4% of the placebo group found that their depression symptoms improved. About the same number, 88.5 percent, of the antidepressant users reported that their symptoms improved.

     In many cases, however, the “improvement” reported was noted as minimal. For adolescents and children, the difference between placebos and antidepressants was even less measurable, only.71%.

     That means that 85% of those 43 million Americans taking antidepressants today are exposed to the dangerous side-effects of antidepressants without actually gaining any therapeutic advantage from them.

     Not good odds at all on any risk/reward scale.