Posted by Bob on May 7, 2002, at 22:58:14
In reply to Re: Placebos best anti-depressants?, posted by Jaynee on May 7, 2002, at 20:26:46
> I have read these articles as well, and it makes me wonder what kind of depression the people taking the sugar pill suffered from. I can tell you now, that there is no sugar pill that will help an anxious depressive.
>
> Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of ..it.
------------I have to agree here. Nobody ever talks about the profile of symptoms, or severity in all these drug trials. It's almost as if a person either has depression or not. Nobody mentions severe depression, severe anxiety, bipolar, pschosis etc. When drug companies try to get drugs approved, they want plain, simple, uncomplicated, light to moderate, straightforward, vanilla depression. They don't want all the other comorbid diagnoses that cloud their findings and are hard to treat. That spells disaster. They like low Hamilton ratings.
To me it's obvious that the less severe one's symptoms, the better chance there is of responding to placebo. This is why they often have failed studies where there is no significant difference between placebo and the drug. People who aren't severely sick are also more appropriate for the short term trials they conduct. TRD patients, and severely ill patients aren't conducive to the 12 week max trials.
Bob
poster:Bob
thread:105463
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020503/msgs/105511.html