There’s no two ways about it: When it comes to beating depression, that last thing you want is your doctor’s first choice.

Tell him you’re down in the dumps, and he’ll reach for his prescription pad — but the dirty secret about the depression meds used by some 30 million Americans every year is that they just don’t work.

Too many people have already figured that out the hard way — and now, a new study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry confirms it’s not just them.

It’s the drugs.

In this one, researchers put sertraline — aka Zoloft — up against both a placebo and a form of psychotherapy. Sixteen weeks later, and there was no statistical difference between any of the three groups.

Some of the patients on Zoloft were even switched to another med, Effexor — and still got no relief.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone, since studies have shown for years how even the most popular antidepressant drugs can’t beat a placebo.

But it did.

“I was surprised by the results,” confessed lead researcher Jacques P. Barber, dean of the Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University in New York, according to Reuters. “They weren’t what I’d expected.”

I’m not sure what Dr. Barber was expecting, since I tell you all the time about research in which antidepressants fall way short. A study just last month even found that not only do SSRIs get roughly the same response rate as the placebo, but they actually make the depression worse a full fifth of the time.

That’s not the only risk that comes from SSRIs — and it’s not even close to the worst risk. These drugs have been linked to everything from personality changes to sexual dysfunction to death, including death by suicide.

But you don’t have to put your life on the line for a treatment that doesn’t work — because there are real answers out there…answers that can change your life for the better if you’re willing to look.

In many cases, depression is a result of nutritional and hormonal imbalances — something no antidepressant drug in the world can fix. A skilled naturopathic physician, however, can help you find the real source of your depression and correct it without meds.

To find a doctor skilled in natural medicine, you may contact the American College for the Advancement in Medicine at www.acam.org, 949-309-3520, or 1-800-532-3688.

For short-term relief while you look for that solution, you still don’t have to turn to antidepressants. St. John’s wort has matched or even beaten drugs in some studies, and the amino acid SAMe works so well it’s often the first choice in Europe.

You’ll find both of them in any vitamin shop.

Would you rather suffer from depression or from a stroke? If you’re taking antidepressants, you might not have a choice. The answer could be both.

Why? Because not only do antidepressant drugs fail miserably at doing anything to treat your depression — they could also boost your risk of having a stroke in the process.

That’s according to a study recently published in the journal Stroke.

To top it off, the researchers who stumbled upon this information say you should keep taking those antidepressants anyway.

(The jury is still out on whether the researchers themselves are suffering from some sort of “denial disorder.” It’s either that, or they’re getting paid to push the antidepressants. It’s tough to say.)

Either one of those reasons could explain why they’re so reluctant to blame the meds — despite the evidence right under their noses. And the evidence is pretty clear.

When the researchers tracked 80,574 women between the ages of 54 and 79 for six years, they found that depressed women had a 29 percent boost in stroke risk when compared to women with no history of the condition.

Women who took antidepressant meds had an even greater risk, rising 39 percent when compared to non-depressed women.

Those are the facts. Everything that comes after that is just a giant guessing game. Because instead of blaming the meds for that extra risk, the researchers guessed that the women who take them must simply be more depressed.

And since depression on its own seems to boost stroke risk, they further guessed, more severe depression must cause it to shoot even higher.

But guess again, because none of that is supported by the data in the study — or even by basic logic. After all, many of the people who take antidepressants aren’t battling severe depression in the first place.

Statistics from The National Institute of Mental Health say that only 2 percent of the population suffers from severe depression, and 6.7 percent suffer from depression. Yet some 10 percent of the entire U.S. population is taking antidepressants in any given year.

In case you still want to blame the depression instead of the meds, there’s more research that backs the link between antidepressants and stroke.

One study last year found that women on SSRIs such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and Lexapro had a 45-percent increase in the risk of stroke and a 32-percent increase in the risk of death from all causes. (You can check out the details of that study here.)

Of course, then — like now — researchers urged women to keep taking their meds anyway.

But if you’re on these meds, talk to your doc about a safe way off — because the bottom line is that you can beat depression without drugs. Studies have shown everything from ordinary exercise to simple talk therapy can match or beat powerful antidepressant drugs.

A little exercise can even cut your stroke risk, too — and that’s not a guess.

I’m always alarmed by medical research that only looks at a little piece of a much bigger
picture.

Take a recent study out of Italy that concluded that Zoloft and Lexapro are the best antidepressants. The catch? They’re the “best” only when compared to the current generation of other Big Pharma antidepressants.

The study didn’t compare them to any other form of treatment. Not one!

It’s like two men at the top of a Montana cliff arguing over the best way down – jumping over the top or tumbling down the side – all the while ignoring a nearby path.

But to me, the bottom line is still the bottom line: None of these pills will help your body make more serotonin or dopamine, the two crucial neurotransmitters that patients battling depression need.

That’s a little like selling an anti-balding treatment that won’t help you grow more hair.

And then there are those famous side effects. These pills come with a barnyard full of them, including nausea, insomnia, diarrhea and sexual side effects, not to mention withdrawal symptoms when trying to get off them. 

And yet this study has somehow decided which of these are “best.” As if the best out of a series of bad choices might somehow be a good choice.

Call me old-fashioned, but that’s just not how I practice medicine.

The real question isn’t which drug is the best, but whether people should be taking any drug at all when battling depression, especially when there are ways to treat and manage it without costly and addictive prescriptions and horrible side effects.

Heck, even plain old exercise has been shown to be as effective as Zoloft, and the most common side effect of that is general fitness and overall good health.

But Big Pharma won’t make a dime off that.