A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that SSRI’s like Paxil and Prozac are no more effective in treating depression than a placebo pill. That means they are 33 per cent effective, which is the percent of patients who will respond well to a sugar pill.
The study examined data from 136,293 study participants, aged 50 to 79, who were not taking antidepressants when they enrolled in the study, and who were followed for an average of six years. The researchers observed a significant difference in stroke rates: antidepressant users were 45 percent more likely to experience strokes than women who weren’t taking antidepressants. The study also found that when overall death rates (all-cause mortality) were compared between the two groups, those on antidepressants had a 32 percent higher risk of death from all causes compared with non-users.
Writing in the Guardian, Ed Halliwell examines the reason for this trend, noting that antidepressant prescriptions have increased more than threefold since the beginning of the 1990s, far outstripping the increase in the percentage of the population classified with a “common mental disorder.”
Dr. Brad Hagen, a clinical psychologist and faculty member at the University of Lethbridge, the reason for the skyrocketing rates of depression are a matter of heated debate. “Depending on how you look at it, depression either started becoming more common or recognized, or it became marketed,” says Hagen. Sales of antidepressant drugs worldwide are in the tens of billions of dollars each year. Dr. Hagen says the number of sales is actually quite “mindboggling.”
Joanna Moncrieff of University College London wrote an opinion piece recently for the BBC. Contrary to the impression promoted by the psychiatric and drug industries, psychiatric drugs do not work by correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain.