Episode Summary
Today I thought I would poke around a bit on line to see what I could find out about how effective antidepressants are. I found some interesting statistics, some ground breaking research and finally get an answer to the question “Are placebos more effective than antidepressants?”
Episode Show Notes
[APOLOGY – in the recording I referred to Dr Cipriani (author of reference [8]) below as “he”. Dr Cipriani is in fact Andrea Cipriani, something I was not aware of when I made the recording.]
00:22 – In Joe Dispenza’s book “You Are The Placebo” he cited a meta analysis of 19 antidepressant clinical trials that stated “most of the improvement was due to the placebo”.
01:23 – My confirmation bias kicked in reading Joe Dispenza’s book and I jumped on statistics like “across 35 trials and over 5,000 participants placebos worked as well as antidepressants 81% of the time” to confirm my belief NOT to use antidepressants.
02:36 – The article on WikipediA about antidepressants cites 30-50% of people show no response to antidepressants.
02:49 – The National Centre For Biotechnology Information say that 40-60 out of 100 people will respond to antidepressants and 20-40 people out of 100 will respond to placebos.
03:19 – On the UK National Health Service website, they quote the Royal College of Psychiatrists who say 50-65% of people will respond to antidepressants and 25-30% will respond to a placebo.
03:35 – So it seems that a placebo is almost half as good as an antidepressant.
03:48 – The WikipediA article also states that in clinical studies 1/3 of people show full remission; 1/3 show a response (symptoms improve?) and 1/3 are unresponsive.
04:05 – A WebMD article on the effectiveness of antidepressants mentions it has been well known for some time that antidepressants in the real world don’t approach the success rates in clinical trials.
04:21 – The reason for the anomaly is because patients for the trials are carefully screened to ensure there are no complicating factors (eg other illnesses or taking other medication) that might affect the results.
04:53 – If you stop taking the antidepressants, they stop working.
04:59 – A 2003 study reported on WikipediA claimed that 30-60% of people prescribed antidepressants, don’t follow the instructions of their prescribing doctor. In 2013 in the US this was as many as 50%.
05:39 – Many of the more recent google search results cited a groundbreaking study looking at 522 clinical trials of 21 different antidepressants involving over 116,000 patients.
06:04 – It concludes that all of the 21 drugs studied in the clinical trials out performed placebos.
06:55 – From my research this morning, it seems that antidepressants only impact about a third to half of people who take them, but a placebo also has an impact on some people.
08:03 – My next step is to explore what alternatives there are to antidepressants.
If taking no drugs can positively make a change (placebo) then perhaps taking a natural substance might even better or exceed that of antidepressants.
Sources Used To Compile The Information Discussed In This Episode
[1] Antidepressant – (WikipediA)
[2] You Are The Placebo – (Dr Joe Dispenza)
[3] Depression: How effective are antidepressants? – (National Center For Biotechnology Information)
[4] The drugs do work: antidepressants are effective, study shows – (The Guardian)
[5] Overview – Antidepressants – (www.NHS.uk)
[6] Can Antidepressants Work for Me? – (WebMD)
[7] Big new study confirms antidepressants work better than placebo (www.NHS.uk)
[8] Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and network meta-analysis – (www.TheLancet.com)
