The Emperor’s New Drugs Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

Everyone knows that antidepressant drugs are miracles of modern medicine. By targeting a chemical imbalance in the brain they have restored millions of people to mental health. They are safe and effective and there is a mountain of data to prove it. When Irving Kirsch began to look at that data he knew all this as well as anyone. But, as Kirsch discovered in the course of his research, there’s a problem with what everyone knows about antidepressant drugs. It isn’t true. When Kirsch analysed clinical trials, he found that antidepressants are not much better than placebos – dummy pills with no active ingredients in them at all. But that was only part of the story. Many of the studies sponsored by the drug companies were never published at all. They had been withheld from the public and even from the doctors who prescribe these medications. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Kirsch obtained the data from the hidden trials and found that the difference between drug treatment and placebo is not clinically significant. Indeed it turns out that antidepressant drugs are less effective – and significantly more dangerous – than other forms of treatment. Yet they are used on a massive scale around the world and are worth serious money to the companies that sell them. In the United States alone the market is worth $12 billion annually. So how did antidepressant drugs gain their reputation as a magic bullet for depression? And why has it taken so long for the story to become public? Answering these questions takes us to the point where science and commerce meet, where the lines between clinical research and marketing strategies blur or disappear altogether. Irving Kirsch documents how the data were suppressed by the drug companies and how government regulatory agencies collaborated in withholding them from public view. He shows that the chemical imbalance theory is