Bottom feeding scum who anly want to make money off the problems af others are
not wanted on alt.support.arthritis, and advertising is definitely not allowed.

Go suck on an alum-cookie!

Why didn't you read and quote the entire study?

Dr. Khan found that in only 48 percent of the 52 clinical trials was
the antidepressant superior to the placebo.

Does this really mean that antidepressants are on average no better
than placebos for depression?

In a word, no. It all depends on how depression is defined and what
kind of depressed patients are included in the clinical trials. Unlike
a disease like H.I.V., which can be diagnosed by a simple blood test,
the cause of depression is unknown; it is a syndrome that is diagnosed
based on a cluster of symptoms like sad mood, low self-esteem, suicidal
ideation and insomnia. So two depressed patients who appear the same in
terms of their symptoms may be biologically very different.

To get into a study, a subject needs both to meet diagnostic criteria
for depression and to have the requisite symptom severity, which varies
from study to study. But depressed people who enroll in antidepressant
clinical trials are a very select group who are not representative of
depressed patients in general. For example, they tend be only mildly or
moderately depressed and are never actively suicidal. And they also are
usually free of other psychiatric or medical illness that are common in
the general population.

It turns out that the more severely depressed people are, the less
likely they are to respond to a placebo. And people with more mild
depressions get better with just about all treatments, including
placebos. Since most clinical trials enroll less severely depressed
patients, the observed difference between the response to an
antidepressant and a placebo can be misleadingly small.

So placebo response rates vary a lot depending on the characteristics
of the study subjects; it is easy to pick a group of mildly depressed
patients and show that a placebo is equivalent to an antidepressant.

But the real problem with the so-called placebo effect in depression is
that no one really knows what it is. The reason is that when people are
given placebos, there are two reasons why they may get better. One is
suggestibility or enthusiasm on the part of the patient who wishes to
get better. The other is spontaneous change: they might have gotten
better if nothing was done.

Spontaneous remission occurs naturally in many diseases, like the
common cold, ulcers and asthma, as well as depression. Without
comparing a group of depressed patients followed on neither drug nor
placebo with a group taking a placebo, it is impossible to tell how
much of the placebo response rate is due to suggestibility and how much
is due to spontaneous change. And this is not done in clinical trials
for depression.

So when it comes to depression, no one knows if placebos are really
better than doing nothing. At best, a placebo may give the patient a
temporary boost if he is mildly depressed, but in a seriously depressed
patient, it is right in more ways than one to call it a dummy pill.

... Have a good day.........if you want to.

*WARNING!* "drdach" is not a medical doctor: he's a net.kook who
desperately hopes to deceive people into buying his quack medical
delusions. If one has medical issues, the last thing one wants to do is
take advice from this net.nutcase