Newsweek magazine, in the February 8, 2010 issue, has an interesting cover story about antidepressant drugs by Sharon Begley [http://www.newsweek.com/id/232781] with the tag line, “Studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo, in fact, they may be worse.”
Here are a few choice quotes from the article:
“[The benefit of antidepressants] is hardly more than what patients get when they, unknowingly and as part of a study, take a dummy pill — a placebo. As more and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding, that suggests that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.”
Dr. Irving Kirsch, author of a new book, The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, is quoted as saying, “The belief that antidepressants can cure depression chemically is simply wrong.”
“Unfortunately, the serotonin-deficit theory of depression is built on a foundation of tissue paper. … Direct evidence doesn’t exist.”
and
“Maybe it is time to pull back the curtain and see the wizard for what he is. As for Kirsch, he insists that it is important to know that much of the benefit of antidepressants is a placebo effect. If placebos can make people better, then depression can be treated without drugs that come with serious side effects, not to mention costs. Wider recognition that antidepressants are a pharmaceutical version of the emperor’s new clothes, he says, might spur patients to try other treatments.”
If you are taking these drugs, do not stop taking them based on what you read here. You could suffer serious withdrawal symptoms. You should seek the advice and help of a competent medical doctor or practitioner before trying to come off any psychiatric drug.
Prescribed for everything from learning and behavioral problems, bedwetting, juvenile delinquency, aggression, criminality, drug addiction and smoking, to handling the fears and problems of our elderly, antidepressants are among the most widely prescribed drugs on Earth, with fifty-four million worldwide currently on them.
But for many, taking antidepressants comes at a severe cost. For more information about the side effects of psychiatric drugs, go to www.cchrstl.org/sideeffects.shtml. Needless to say, allowing yourself to be treated with psychiatric drugs is very risky, since there is very little science to back it up.
According to top experts, the majority of people having mental problems are actually suffering from nonpsychiatric disease that is causing emotional stress. For more information about medical causes of psychiatric symptoms, go to www.cchrstl.org/causes.shtml.