NC Healthcare Coverage Blog

A recent study has discovered that antidepressants do not give much help to people who have mild or moderate depression. For these people, just going to the doctor and talking about symptoms and understanding more about depression is often all they need to do to begin to achieve the similar positive effects that medication would provide.

Robert DeRubeis, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor, claims that only the people who have severe depression get the extra benefits from taking antidepressants. The research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

There have been many studies that have shown the benefits of antidepressants over placebos, but most only deal with participants who suffer from extreme depression. DeRubeis said that “confusion arises because there is a tendency to generalize the findings to mean that all depressed people benefit from medications.”

This analysis tried to figure out just how much of the antidepressants’ positive effects is from the specific chemical effects from medicine and how much can be attributed to other things like going to a doctor, making an effort to feel better or simply from the passage of time.

Six placebo-controlled studies were analyzed by researchers for the study. There were 718 patients who either took a placebo (fake pill) or an actual antidepressant. These patients were adults who suffered from a variety of depression cases that ranged from mild to severe according to the Hamilton Depression Ratings Scale, which is a commonly used questionnaire in depression research.

The results from the treatment were similar for those with mild, moderate and severe symptoms, whether or not they had the placebo or the actual antidepressant. The only people who showed notable improvements on the antidepressants were the ones who were considered very severe at the beginning of the study.

So what are some symptoms of a severely depressed person? Well they could have symptoms like feelings of sadness and guilt, feeling that life is not worth living, crying often, sleeping difficulties, being lethargic and discontinuing regular activities. People with this type of extreme depression usually need to take antidepressants to help them improve. DeRubeis said that those who don’t have such deep depression should think about doing cognitive therapies, because treatment can be helpful for any level of depression.