EDITORIAL

EBMH Notebook

Making the best use of available evidence: the case of new generation antidepressants

A response to: Are all antidepressants equal?

Corrado Barbui¹, Andrea Cipriani¹, Toshiaki A Furukawa², Georgia Salanti³, Julian P T Higgins⁴, Rachel Churchill⁵, Norio Watanabe², Atsuo Nakagawa⁶, Ichiro M Omori⁷, John R Geddes⁸

¹ Department of Medicine and Public Health, Section of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, University of Verona, Italy
² Department of Psychiatry and Cognitive–Behavioural Medicine, Nagoya City University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Nagoya, Japan
³ Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Greece
⁴ MRC Biostatistics Unit Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
⁵ Department of Community Based Medicine and Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Review Group, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
⁶ Department of Neuropsychiatry, School of Medicine, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
⁷ Cochrane Schizophrenia Group, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
⁸ Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Correspondence to:
^{Correspondence to} Corrado Barbui, Department of Medicine and Public Health, Section of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, University of Verona, Policlinico "GB Rossi", Piazzale LA Scuro, 10-37134 Verona, Italy; corrado.barbui@univr.it

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In this issue of Evidence-Based Mental Health, Gartlehner and Gaynes¹ comment (see page 98) on our recently published systematic review² that investigated the comparative efficacy and acceptability of 12 new generation antidepressants (see page 107). In their view, methodological shortcomings limit the validity of our results and the conclusions reached. In this commentary, our aim is to explain the rationale for doing this systematic review, outline its main findings and address the points raised by Gartlehner and Gaynes.¹ Scientific debate can illuminate and clarify complex analyses and we are, therefore, delighted to respond to their critique. While we consider that some of the issues raised are substantive and merit reasoned response, we also believe that some of their criticisms seem rather overstated. We understand that Gartlehner and Gaynes too have published an analysis comparing antidepressants and we note that this is now the third . . . [Full text of this article]

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