Commonly prescribed anti-depressants: What clinicians need to know

Gaynor, Danielle, Bogue, John, & Egan, Jonathan. (2011). Commonly prescribed antidepressants: What clinicians need to know. The Irish Psychologist, 37(12), 292-295.

Abstract

According to two Cochrane collaboration reviews (Moncrieff, Wessely, & Hardy, 2004; Turner, Mathews, Linardatos, Tell, & Rosenthal, 2008), the efficacy of modern antidepressants has yet to be conclusively demonstrated to be greater than that of active placebo. In one review, Turner et al. (2008) assessed all studies of antidepressants which had ever been submitted to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States (US). They reported that findings of studies finally published in peer review journals indicated antidepressants had a 94% success rate in treating depression. However, when unpublished results were also examined by the authors of this review, the success rate of antidepressants fell below 50%, and, when combined, published and unpublished studies showed a 51% level of efficacy in antidepressants. This result was minimally better than that of the results for placebos. Fournier et al. (2010) also investigated this phenomenon and concluded that the extent of benefit of antidepressants compared with a placebo appears to increase with the severity of depressive symptoms. They reported that antidepressants showed a significant treatment effect for those with severe depression. They added that the extent of benefit for patients with mild or moderate depressive symptoms may be minimal or non-existent.

Publisher

The Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI)

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland

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Collections

School of Psychology (Scholarly Articles)