Antidepressant/Placebo = Shrink/Counsellor?

So antidepressants for people suffering with mild to moderate depression are about as effective as taking a placebo?

Basically then, are we to beleive that an antidepressant (or placebo) is merely doing the work of a shrink/counsellor?

In essence, this seems to be the gist of things doesn't it? Or have I got it all wrong?

Take an antidepressant for mild to moderate depression and the patient 'may' feel they are getting better.

Go talk to a shrink/counsellor and the patient (over time) will feel they are getting better.

Take a placebo for mild to moderate depression and the patient 'may' feel they are getting better.

I'm surprised there has been no entrepreneur who has latched onto this very lucrative market.

Think about it. A drug that claims to cure your depression but really it's a sweet - the patient, obviously does not know this.

You could get past the FDA/MHRA with the ingredients of the drug as both regulators seem pretty useless when it comes to regulating the drugs we take anyway.

If there were only such a market eh?

It seems Pharma have the stranglehold on this too because basically their drugs to cure depression are placebos with chemicals.

The only benefit seems to be long term adverse reactions. Maybe we should thank Pharma for showing us what addiction feels like, giving us sleepless nights, electric zaps jolting through our bodies, heightened aggression, feelings of suicide and homicide plus a host of other reactions that accompany these drugs?

End of the day, Pharma and the regulators have lied to us all. For years they have touted 'The benefits far outweigh the risks' line.

Their studies are akin to giving a small child a gun, leaving the child in a room and intermittently allowing a group of people into that room. Some of the people want to show the child love, others want to kill the child. The child does not know the good from the bad so shoots and kills 3 random people. Luckily for the child, he kills one child murderer - Phew! these guns can come in pretty handy, it saved the child from being murdered. Let's publish the results, it don't matter about the two innocent people that the child killed... at the end of the day, the gun saved this child's life!

An extreme analogy, I agree, but one that is the basis of clinical trials.

Or am I wrong?

Fid

Read the new book, The Evidence, However, Is Clear...The Seroxat Scandal

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