iblog

Sales of Morrissey albums will soar, the poetry of Leonard Cohen will top the bestsellers lists, black will become (if possible) more fashionable. No, it’s not the Eighties coming back, it’s a new piece of research saying that, if you’re depressed, you may need to live with it and not rely on pills to feel better because anti-depressants may not really work.

The study, published yesterday in the journal PLoS Medicine and led by an academic from the University of Hull, took data from 35 clinical trials, covering the four most-prescribed anti-depressants in the US. The results from these studies were pooled and examined to see if, overall, there was any significant effect of anti-depressant.

The research found that, overall, there was a improvement in mood when taking an anti-depressant. But it also found that an almost equal improvement in mood was seen when taking a sugar-pill that the subject was told was an anti-depressant. In fact, in two of the trials, patients reported feeling happier when taking the sugar-pill than they did when taking the actual drug.

Interestingly, the trial found that the more depressed an individual was to begin with, the greater the benefit that they seemed to get from the drug. Severely depressed individuals were the group who reported the biggest difference in improvement of mood when taking the real drug and when taking the sugar pill.

The study’s authors say that this is a false result, “attributable to a decrease in responsiveness to placebo, rather than an increase in responsiveness to medication.” More depressed people were no more likely to report an increase in mood with the anti-depressant, they were just less likely to report an improvement with the placebo.

If these drugs have no real effect, then why are they still prescribed? In the year 2006/2007 there were over 31 million prescriptions for anti-depressants in the UK. Would so many people be taking them if they didn’t make them feel better?

According to the study’s authors, any beneficial effects you might feel come down to a ‘placebo effect’. We’ve probably all heard stories of people getting drunk on water because they believe it’s vodka. This, in essence, is a ‘placebo effect’; something affects you a certain way because you believe it should. Anti-depressants make you happier because you expect to be happier. After all, you’re taking anti-depressants.

So, should this finding be seen as a hammer-blow to depressives, one less way to scare away the black dog?

No. If anything it should be seen as a hopeful message as it shows just how easily depression can be relieved if you’re in the right frame of mind. They say “Let a smile be your umbrella” but an upbeat attitude could protect you from more than just rain.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am and is filed under Current Affairs, Science, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.