The research done on the effectiveness of anti-depressants varies widely and is pretty convoluted. Without doing personal research, coming to a conclusion is incredibly difficult if one wants a simple yes-or-no answer to the broad question, “Do anti-depressants actually work? ” The three articles present pretty different opinions. Dr. Mark Hyman, in opposition to anti-depressants, argues that because most of the studies that show negative results regarding anti-depressants were never published, that the flood of these drugs onto the market was just a business opportunity for pharmaceutical manufacturers.
He argues that the current studies on the effectiveness of these drugs are not to be trusted because of conflicts of interest (such as drug companies paying scientists and psychiatrists). While the information he provided about the unpublished negative studies in the New England Journal of Medicine seems to be fact, there are some holes in his argument. The first thing that seems to make him untrustworthy is his publisher. Scientology is not a widely accepted or highly regarded way of thinking, to say the least.
He also uses a lot of personal anecdotal evidence, such as experiences with his own patients, or stories heard at a dinner table conversation from his step-uncle. Anecdotal evidence is not at all acceptable evidence. The article by Eliezer Sobel in Psychology Today makes the point similar to that of Dr. Hyman; that anti-depressants are a ploy cooked up by pharmaceutical companies and their-handsomely paid psychiatrist cronies. He references other authors that describe an iatrogenic phenomenon (an epidemic caused by the cure).
He writes that it began with a horrid over-diagnosing of psychiatric illnesses and “chemical imbalances” that must be corrected with drugs, and a whole cocktail of drugs to balance out the ill individual, in fact. But this author relies mostly on books written by others and anecdotal evidence as well. The third article in the New York Times doesn’t seem to provide anything conclusive as far as the effectiveness of anti-depressants. He provides information on studies that support the claim that anti-depressants do work, but is incredibly vague on other points.
For example, he describes maintenance studies done on anti-depressants, where subjects taking medication and doing well would suddenly be switched to a dummy pill, to try and address the issue of the placebo effect. But he doesn’t actually report if any of these subjects got worse when their medication was dropped, only that for those who kept taking the pill, “anti-depressants cut the odds of relapse by 70 percent. ” Given the evidence provided in these articles, making a conclusion on anti-depressants is almost as hard as before.
Both sides provide claims that while some studies indicate usefulness in these drugs, conflicts of interest and fishy studies throw caution to the wind. The best conclusion I personally can make from these findings would be that anti-depressants are capable of working, but not for anyone and certainly not for those who are not actually depressed. I would agree that psychiatric illnesses are grossly over diagnosed, and the amount of illegitimate test subjects could definitely skew the data.
Given the conflicting data, I would say that without more information (such as my own personal studies, non-biased researchers, etc. ), I cannot make a definitive conclusion. I will trust anti-depressants to a small degree, mostly because my own ADD medication is extremely effective, and I am going solely on personal experience. But I will not completely trust research that is paid for by drug companies. I hope for better and more research.