Social Worker Shanna at work in the Ada County Jail Boise, Idaho

I recently ran across this interesting article (found here) which is the latest in a long series over the years comparing antidepressant efficacy to placebos.  I know that this is a controversial subject with some believing that all (or most) of antidepressant effect is placebo effect and others believing that antidepressants do indeed work better than placebos, especially among the most severely depressed patients.  The researchers in this article did a review of several trials and concluded that antidepressants work better than placebo in those with mild and moderate depression.  The most interesting statistic from this paper in my mind is this:  in this, the most positive analysis that I have read  on the effect of antidepressants, the “Number Needed to Treat” (NNT) to have one patient do better than by placebo alone was five (5).  In other words, 4 out of 5 patients in this study got no benefit from the antidepressant over placebo. Continue reading →