Try New Believe from the makers of Obecalp! You won’t BELIEVE how well it works!!
You probably caught the news story yesterday about the new study that says some anti-depressants are no more effective than placebos for all but the most severely depressed patients. (That article also links to the original paper, if you’re interested — I read the abstract, which I thought was sufficient to understand the study)
The study specifically looked at Prozac, Effxor, Serzone, and Paxil, but called into question the efficacy of all SSRI anti-depressants, which have become the most commonly prescribed class of anti-depressants since they were first developed in the late 1980s. In the last several years, the companies that make these drugs have come under some criticism for overmarketing them, particularly through the technique of developing “new” drugs that are minor variations of the originals and using direct marketing to consumers to convince them to request the drugs from their physicians for somewhat dubious conditions. However, this study (which was not a clinical study but a meta-analysis of clincial studies) raises a serious question about using SSRI medications at all.
The placebo effect is a well-documented phenomenon throughout medicine, to the extent that most clinical trials of new drugs compare results directly to placebos as their operational control. While a finding of significance in an individual study might be in the conclusions based on very small statistical values, a meta-study like this can show a larger trend that can discount individual findings.
No single study of any kind, even a single meta-analysis, is completely conclusive, so this is bound to launch quite a bit of controversy. I think it’s reasonable to suggest that a lot of doctors overprescribe anti-depressants as an easy way to deal with more complicated emotional issues in patients, but I also think that SSRI meds have been beneficial to people with depression and other mental illnesses without the suggestive power of the placebo effect. It will be interesting to see where this goes over the next couple of years.
In my experience, anti-depressants work. I’m probably one of those severly depressed people, though.
Like most patients, I’ve gone through the gammit of drugs, trying to find the right ones. I’ve just recently started to take Prozac to see if that will work ( along with the other gazillion I already take…), I, and my family have already noticed a huge difference.
Your milage may very, but for those with real depression, it would be extremely detrimental to experiment with a placebo!