In a recent post, I argued that no-one knows how well antidepressants work. Although there have been a huge number of clinical trials conducted on a variety of antidepressant drugs, it is impossible to know what the results of these trials mean in terms of real benefits for real patients.
I'm not the only skeptic. A paper just out in the American Journal of Psychiatry adds to growing case against contemporary antidepressant trials (almost all of which are industry-sponsored) and should give everyone cause for thought.
The article, Can Phase III Trial Results of Antidepressant Medications Be Generalized to Clinical Practice? A STAR*D Report, is one of the many spin-offs from STAR*D. STAR*D was a large and ambitious study designed to investigate the effectiveness of antidepressants in a realistic setting. The results were rather difficult to interpret (and some are yet to be published), but this report is certainly amongst ...
