Antidepressants Don't Work

The Rise And Fall Of Antidepressants

Serotonin, the 'happiness hormone' was found to be associated with the emotion of happiness in the brain. Serotonin is one of many neurotransmitters, which is are chemicals used by the nervous system to transmit nerve impulses between one nerve and the next. Early antidepressants were shown to increase serotonin levels, and this is why they were thought to work, but they also effected other systems and so produced many side effects. The race was on to find drugs which specifically raised serotonin levels, and in the later 1980's the drug fluoxetine, was launched under the brand name Prozac, which was an specifically increased serotonin levels, and was the first of a range of SSRI or Specific Serotonin Reuptake inhibitor drugs to be launched. Published drug trials claimed that these SSRIs helped 80% of people with depression.

The Chemical Imbalance Theory Of Depression, which was just an idea before SSRIs, was now strengthened into a widely accepted theory that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain, and that increasing serotonin levels cures depression. This belief was completely believed by the medical establishment, by doctors, and through effective promotion by the drug companies, by patients. This was the rise of the Prozac generation, where SSRIs were promoted as a lifestyle choice. These antidepressants were extremely popular and made vast profits for the drug companies.

However by the late 1998 Irving Kirsch published data showing that placebos were almost as effective as antidepressants. producing three quarters of their effect.Placebos are tablets with no active ingredient which are tested against active drugs in drug trials to show that drugs really work.. In 2002 Kirsch revealed that several drug trials of antidepressants showed that they were no more effective than placebo, but that these trials had not been published, and so nobody knew about them. When the data from these trials was combined with the published trials, antidepressants were only 18% more effective than placebos, and that such a small difference in effect was not clinically significant.

Publicity about the side effects, addictive potential and the increased risk of suicide caused by antidepressants started to emerge in the media. Gradually, the realisation that antidepressants were not the wonder drugs that we were all lead to believe started to dawn on the medical profession and the public, despite reassurances from drug manufacturers.

Antidepressants have now fallen out of favour, and the actions of drug manufacturers and government drug regulation agencies have been called into question in letting these drugs onto the market and allowing them to be promoted in the way that they were.

Antidepressants do not cure depression, they have major side effects, and any place they have in treating depression should be reserved for severe cases and then only used with great caution.

The Marketing Of Madness

The Marketing Of Madness - 'The Marketing of Madness' is a series of videos exposing the way antidepressant drugs have been marketed and revealing the lack of evidence that they are effective in treating depression.