Can Antidepressants Really Cure Depression?

Modest But With An Effect

“Importantly,” Prof. Pariante goes on saying, “the paper analyzes unpublished data held by pharmaceutical companies, and shows that the funding of studies by these companies does not influence the result, thus confirming that the clinical usefulness of these drugs is not affected by pharma-sponsored spin.” The review concluded that even though the effects of the 21 antidepressants are short-lived and temporary, it still had an impact on the adults using it.

The Financial Burden

The effectiveness of the drugs varied from one another. Paroxetine (Paxil, Brisdelle, Pexeva), agomelatine (Valdoxan), escitalopram (Lexapro), mirtazapine (Remeron), and sertraline (Zoloft) had a very high response rate with a lower dropout rate. Since depression is present in over 350 million people, the need for clarification has become more crucial than ever. In America, the monetary burden of depression has amounted to be around $210 billion per year.

How Do Antidepressants Work?

Majority of the antidepressants studied were from the kind of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The notion of how antidepressants work is that they boost serotonin levels, even though this is yet to be confirmed. Even the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin are known to be raised even though there has not been any concrete proof regarding this claim.

A Myth In The Pharmacy Market

Serotonin is credited for maintaining mood balance, appetite, and motor, cognitive, and autonomic functions. Following the 1980s, low serotonin levels were blamed as sole reasons for depression. Johann Hari and others have put out words that go against this notion. In the year 2015, Medical News Today had reported on an editorial that was printed in The BMJ by an SSRIs critic named Prof. David Healy who debated that depression is a result of low levels of serotonin and that SSRIs increases the serotonin levels is a pharmaceutical myth.

Need For In-Depth Research

The researchers from Oxford then made an argument that a more updated research work and better antidepressants are needed. They also stated that since the effect of antidepressants cannot be specified, there is a need for a more specialized drug. Because of the meager amount of knowledge about antidepressants, a heavy risk in the health of depressed people exists. Hence, the production for better and long-lasting drugs have to happen soon.

Death Risk?

The MNT has made a recent discovery about antidepressants being able to raise the risk of mortality. These research works have suggested that these drugs increase the risk of premature death. This was a study made by the McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, who came up with a meta-analysis of 16 studies regarding a total number of about 375,000 participants which pointed towards a 33 percent higher risk of premature death with people using antidepressants.