Latest Study on Antidepressants Is Old News

Asbury Park, NJA recent study suggesting that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Paxil afford little benefit to patients with mild to moderate symptoms of depression is not without precedent. Previous studies have come to similar conclusions, leaving some patients to wonder if their use of SSRI antidepressants is warranted.


A meta-analysis that appeared in the 1/6/10 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that while people with severe depression clearly benefit to a much greater degree from the intervention of antidepressants over a placebo, "there is little evidence to suggest that they produce specific pharmacological benefit for the majority of patients with less severe acute depressions."

This isn't the first time we have seen these results, according to an article published in the New Jersey-based Asbury Park Press on 1/19/10. The authors of the article, pharmacology and nutrition experts Joe and Terry Graedon, revealed that back in 2008 Dr. Irving Kirsch and his colleagues reported that highly successful antidepressants, including Paxil, hardly worked better than placebos in clinical trials (PLoS Medicine, February 2008). The Graedons concluded, "The overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medications is below recommended criteria for clinical significance."

A few years prior to that there was the STAR*D study, a massive imitative fuelled by federal government funding. The STAR*D study, as summarized in the 3/23/06 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, concluded that only one in four patients responded favorably to the antidepressants they were prescribed.

There is little doubt that antidepressants like Paxil are helpful to patients with severe symptoms of depression. However, for the vast majority of patients with less severe symptoms, the Graedons extol the virtues of alternative solutions such as exercise, talk therapy or controlled light exposure.

The results of these studies throw into question a large number of the more than 100 million prescriptions written for antidepressants each year. The greatest concern is for women who are or plan to be pregnant, given the risk for Paxil birth defects. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) placed Paxil into its second-highest category for risk of birth defects, stating later that Paxil "should generally not be initiated in women who are in their first trimester of pregnancy or in women who plan to become pregnant in the near future."

Some antidepressants can be difficult to stop. Withdrawal symptoms, such as dizziness, nausea, sweating, chills, loss of appetite or sensations like electrical shocks, are not uncommon.