Indeed. The issue with antidepressants is that the reported experiences are entirely subjective to start with (and so are the symptoms when drawing volunteers—I feel kinda down because I am low on money, I guess I’d enter this antidepressant trial.
How would we tell anti-whining medication from the one that does actually improve the condition? Usually we look at objective criteria—results of blood tests, death rate, what ever. The closest we got to an objective metric for the depression is the (attempted and successful) suicide rate. The suicide rate is at best not affected and at worst is increased by anti-depressants, strongly suggesting that the anti-depressants are not an effective treatment.
It is easy to create anti-whining medication. Anything that has more severe or more common side effects than the placebo would do, to some extent. The business conducting the trials would try their best to use such placebo that un-blinds the trial the most, while being legally passable—that is simply a rational thing for them to do.
Indeed. The issue with antidepressants is that the reported experiences are entirely subjective to start with (and so are the symptoms when drawing volunteers—I feel kinda down because I am low on money, I guess I’d enter this antidepressant trial.
How would we tell anti-whining medication from the one that does actually improve the condition? Usually we look at objective criteria—results of blood tests, death rate, what ever. The closest we got to an objective metric for the depression is the (attempted and successful) suicide rate. The suicide rate is at best not affected and at worst is increased by anti-depressants, strongly suggesting that the anti-depressants are not an effective treatment.
It is easy to create anti-whining medication. Anything that has more severe or more common side effects than the placebo would do, to some extent. The business conducting the trials would try their best to use such placebo that un-blinds the trial the most, while being legally passable—that is simply a rational thing for them to do.