EBMH NOTEBOOK
Do antidepressants work? A commentary on "Initial severity and antidepressant benefits: a meta-analysis of data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration" by Kirsch et al
Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University
Correspondence to:
Dr H McAllister-Williams, Reader in Clinical Psychopharmacology and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, Psychiatry, Leazes Wing, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4LP, UK; r.h.mcallister-williams@ncl.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The publication of this meta-analysis1 received a vast amount of coverage in the UK. This is despite the "bottom line" that the review does not report any novel findings—antidepressants work and their effectiveness increases with baseline severity of depression. This was not the picture painted in the media. Rather the conclusions drawn by the authors took an extreme viewpoint and the review’s publication was sensationalised both by the journal editor and the media. It is difficult to fully understand the reasons for this. Antidepressants have had a bad press in recent years over a number of issues (for example, discontinuation/withdrawal and suicidality) and the authors’ conclusions were in a similar "anti-antidepressant" vein—that they don’t work.
This is not the first time that Irvine Kirsch, Professor of Psychology at the University of Hull has caused a storm about antidepressants. A previous paper in the BMJ2 argued that antidepressants have little or
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
