Posted by LostboyinNC2 on October 3, 2002, at 15:50:36
In reply to Re: antidepressants and severe depression, posted by LostboyinNC2 on October 3, 2002, at 15:37:30
What Ive been saying all along. The people who are the least likely to get a so called "placebo response" from antidepressants are those who should be included in drug trials the most. Not these mildly depressed people who have "woody allen" depression.
http://www.mhsource.com/pt/p020909.html
"These studies, by and large, do not enroll patients with the subforms of depression that respond more favorably to antidepressants and are plagued by "inflation" of entry symptom severity thresholds (Klein et al., 2002). The problems persist largely because the standard methods still work well enough to accomplish the studies' primary aim of the sponsors: to obtain FDA approval of their medications (Thase, 2002b"
Again, all it takes to get FDA approval for a new antidepressant is to cause a HAMD score improvement of 50%. Just a "response" not a remission. Furthermore, people with severe depressions are not included in new drug trials often enough, much less those who have psychotic depression. The goal is just to get FDA drug approval and get all the woody allen dysthymia people on SSRIs so the drug companies make a shitload of money. You would make more money selling 10 million SSRI prescriptions a year to those with dysthymia than you would selling 500,000 prescriptions a year to those with REAL DEAL clinical depression, who cant sleep, eat, think clearly and their bodies are falling apart and they cant work.Give me a break its a joke. Psychiatry needs to be overhauled.
Eric LOSTBOYinNC
poster:LostboyinNC2
thread:121482
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020930/msgs/122158.html