Antidepressants do work, biggest ever study finds

Scientists claim to have settled “one of medicine’s biggest debates” after the largest ever study of its kind found that antidepressants really do work.

The study, which analysed data from 522 trials involving 116,477 people, found “21 common antidepressants were all more more effective than dummy pills” in reducing symptoms of acute depression, the BBC reports. However, the researchers also found “big differences in how effective each drug is”.

The most effective drug was amitriptyline, Sky News reports, while one of the least effective was fluoxetine - a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) more commonly known as Prozac.

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The authors of the report, published in The Lancet, say the research shows that “many more people could benefit” from the use of antidepressants.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists said the study “finally puts to bed the controversy on antidepressants”. Research leader Andrea Cipriani, of Oxford University, warned that antidepressants will not work for everyone, however, saying that around a third of depressed patients do not respond to such medication.

Not everyone agrees that the debate over the efficiacy of antidepressants has been resolved.

Quartz writer Olivia Goldhill points out that a major 2008 meta-analysis found antidepressants to be no more effective than placebos. The research, led by Irving Kirsch, the associate director of the programme in placebo studies at Harvard Medical School, featured information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, including data that pharmaceutical companies sent to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on all sponsored clinical trials, many of them unpublished.

“Almost half of the clinical trials sponsored by the drug companies have not been published,” Kirsch wrote in a 2014 paper. “The results of the unpublished trials were known only to the drug companies and the FDA, and most of them failed to find a significant benefit of drug over placebo.”

If you or a person you’re worried about expresses suicidal feelings, you or they should contact a GP or NHS 111. You can also call the Samaritans free on 116 123 for confidential, 24-hour support, or Mind, the mental health charity, on 0300 123 3393.