New Research on the Antidepressant vs Placebo Debate
In the 1990s, everyone was “Listening to Prozac,” after best-selling author Peter Kramer described sparkling personality transformations in patients who took the titular antidepressant drug. Then came the backlash: by the early 2000s, studies showed that Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, weren’t exactly miracle pills but were instead associated with suicide, especially in kids and teens. Another whiplash-inducing turn came in 2008, when a review of the research found that the drugs were actually no more effective than sugar pills, except in cases of the most severe depression.
Last month, research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry sought to help explain the paradoxical findings on SSRIs and other new generation antidepressant drugs, the increasingly popular medications that are now used by more than 1 in 10 Americans over 12.
