Antidepressant use and talk therapy are not as effective in combating depression as an inactive placebo pill, a new clinical trial shows. According to Reuters Health, the study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry shows that people receiving “real” treatment for depression are no more likely to see improvement in their condition than people given a placebo.
“I was surprised by the results,” said study leader Jacques Barber of the Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. “They weren’t what I expected.”
For the study, Barber and his team randomly assigned 156 people diagnosed with depression to one of three groups: those receiving Zoloft and similar medications, those undergoing a form of psychotherapy known as talk therapy and those taking an inactive placebo pill. Over 16 weeks, no differences were observed in how the three groups coped.
Specifically, about 31 percent of antidepressant patients improved on a standard measure of depression systems, compared with 28 percent of patients in talk therapy and 24 percent of people in the placebo group. None of the results were statistically significant.
Barber stressed to Reuters that he did not consider depression therapy pointless, however. Receiving a placebo “is not the same as getting no treatment,” he said. And even people receiving placebos had contact with health professionals, which could have had a positive effect.
