Except if you read the details it’s pretty obvious that most often people would be better off with placebo, considering how many people end up with long-term withdrawal issues if they remain on these drugs.
Robert Whitaker busted this story a while ago in two parts.. The medical field is slowly following with admissions of what amount to total malpractice, though it will never be clearly articulated as such. Could it be because most of the SSRIs are now off patent?
Broad Review of FDA Trials Suggests Antidepressants Only Marginally Better than Placebo — Medscape (registration is free, but you need to do it to read the whole thing)
A new review of 4 meta-analyses of efficacy trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggests that antidepressants are only “marginally efficacious” compared with placebo and “document profound publication bias that inflates their apparent efficacy.”
In addition, when the researchers also analyzed the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) trial, “the largest antidepressant effectiveness trial ever conducted,” they found that “the effectiveness of antidepressant therapies was probably even lower than the modest one reported … with an apparent progressively increasing dropout rate across each study phase.
“We found that out of the 4041 patients initially started on the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor] citalopram in the STAR*D study, and after 4 trials, only 108 patients had a remission and did not either have a relapse and/or dropped out by the end of 12 months of continuing care,” lead study author Ed Pigott, PhD, a psychologist with NeuroAdvantage LLC in Clarksville, Maryland, told Medscape Medical News.
Sustained Benefit “Jaw Dropping”
“In other words, if you’re trying to look at sustained benefit, you’re only looking at 2.7%, which is a pretty jaw-dropping number,” added Dr. Pigott. read the rest of the article
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