This week a research study was published in the medical journal “The Lancet” which aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of many different antidepressants. This wasn’t new research per say, but a huge study of lots of published and unpublished papers.
They specifically looked at studies of major depressive episodes and the average course of treatment was 8 weeks.
They reported two major findings, one, that antidepressants were effective and secondly, that some were very effective and others hardly effective at all. One might imagine that it is all the newly discovered drugs that are proving to be most effective and yet this wasn’t always the case. You can see a list of their relative effectiveness here:
In the case of major depression, it is really important that people have a chance to try every form of treatment possible. Although we welcome this research and are glad it shows our clients which medications have the best-evidenced outcome, it is also important that people are given the chance to try many different treatments. The authors point out that because of a lack of resources, antidepressants will be used more frequently than psychological interventions. For our clients, we can offer them nearly every effective treatment to help them quickly find what works for them personally.
You can download the original research paper here: The Lancet