Antidepressants just don’t work

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years getting many of my depressed patients off dangerous antidepressants.

I’ve found they sometimes simply don’t work – and now, the rest of medicine is finally starting to see the light too.

Recent studies have questioned the effectiveness of some of the most common antidepressants – drugs millions of Americans take in the belief it’ll help them feel better.

But that’s all it is in most cases – a belief.

A number of studies have found that many of these drugs work no better than placebos. One review of research, published in the February Journal of Affective Disorders, gave credit to the placebo effect a whopping 68 percent of the time.

The most recent study, published in the April American Journal of Psychiatry, finds that antidepressants really only work for a small portion of those who actually take the drugs – specifically, those who battle depression alone with no other complicating conditions like substance abuse or other mental illness.

When you consider that up to 60 percent of all depression patients are coping with at least one other condition, you start to see just how ineffective these drugs really are.

The researchers reached this conclusion by using government data from 41 psychiatric facilities over three years. They used data from nearly everyone – not a group carefully screened and selected for a clinical trial.

It turns out the drug trials paid for by Big Pharma often don’t represent a realistic group of patients. A 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that most people battling major depression would be excluded from clinical trials. Another study found less than 10 percent of a typical group of patients would qualify.

And the researchers in the latest study concluded that the clinical trials don’t match the real-world results, and usually end up overestimating the effectiveness of the drugs.

That’s typical Big Pharma chicanery for you.

And if you think that kind of deck-stacking only takes place in clinical trials for antidepressants, then I’ve got some oceanfront property here in Montana to sell you.

In the end, these studies mean more doctors prescribe more drugs that don’t work for people who don’t need them.

You can win the battle against depression, and it doesn’t involve meds or side effects that could include increased suicidal behavior.

Depression is usually a sign that the patient has lower serotonin levels. Those can be corrected through nutritional therapy, not drugs. Vitamins B6 and B12 and tryptophan are often the answer, and they’re much safer to boot. For more information on nutritional deficiency caused depression, see my book The Body Heals, 2nd Edition.

When your body finally gets what it’s been missing, it’s not a placebo effect.

It’s a cure.