Do antidepressants work? A commentary on 'Initial severity and antidepressant benefits: a meta-analysis of data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration' by Kirsch et al.

摘要

The publication of this meta-analysis1 received a vast amount of coverage in the UK. This is despite the "bottom line" that the review does not report any novel findings-antidepressants work and their effectiveness increases with baseline severity of depression. This was not the picture painted in the media. Rather the conclusions drawn by the authors took an extreme viewpoint and the review's publication was sensationalised both by the journal editor and the media. It is difficult to fully understand the reasons for this. Antidepressants have had a bad press in recent years over a nuniber of issues (for example, discontinuation/withdrawal andsuicidality) and the authors' conclusions were in a similar "anti-antidepressant" vein-that they don't work.