Tag Archives: sugar pills

Dealing With Depression Naturally

According to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, approximately 10 percent of Americans are taking antidepressant medications.

This means that over 31 million Americans are gobbling Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Elavil, Norpramin, Luvox, Paxil, Wellbutrin and other antidepressant psychiatric drugs like M & M’s. This drug use accounts for billions of dollars in pharmaceutical sales annually (9.6 U.S. billion in 2008).

Yet according to a landmark study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, antidepressant medications work – as well as placebos and not more. In other words, people in depression studies who are given sugar pills instead of antidepressant drugs do as well as the group who gets the drugs.

Leading psychologist says antidepressants no better than placebo—the difference is no suicidal side effects with placebo

We spend more than £250 m a year on antidepressants in the UK – and it’s a complete waste of money. They are not much better than sugar pills, they have nasty side – effects, such as sexual dysfunction, and they increase young people’s risk of suicide. New research shows they don’t even work on the brain in the way we thought they did.

Antidepressant no more effective than sugar pills in treating depression

“Our data should give some pause” to doctors and patients weighing antidepressants, Robert DeRubeis, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, said in a telephone interview. “They should give some consideration to other alternatives.” Exercise has been shown to be helpful to stem depression, as does psychotherapy, and even “self-treatment” with the aid of the plethora of self-help literature, he said.