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Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

(www.theguardian.com)
206 points pseudolus | 2 comments | 21 Nov 25 00:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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monero-xmr ◴[21 Nov 25 01:01 UTC] No.46000021[source]▶
SSRIs literally saved my life, no question about it. Night and day difference, from daily panic attacks destroying my life, happiness, and career, to being almost completely better in 2 weeks after starting. I tried exercise and diet and meditation and you name it, for years!, before I gave medication a go.

Do not care what the science says. It 100% worked for me. Please get help if you need it, tens of millions of people use this medicine successfully

Articles like this are part of the narrative that SSRIs in general are no better than placebo. Absolutely not true for me!

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1. chemotaxis ◴[21 Nov 25 02:40 UTC] No.46000640[source]▶
Placebo works very well for many people too! That's precisely the thing. That's what makes these studies tricky.

If you're a doctor, and if Prozac helps your patients, then it's obviously excellent. You should keep writing prescriptions.

If you're a scientist, you obviously want to distinguish between "real" drugs and drugs that help because people believe they should. So, you do these kinds of tests.

And then, from the perspective of ethics, once you know it's just placebo, you kinda shouldn't keep giving it to people, even if it helps? Maybe? I don't know. That's the weird part.

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2. sitharus ◴[21 Nov 25 02:49 UTC] No.46000694[source]▶
> And then, from the perspective of ethics, once you know it's just placebo, you kinda shouldn't keep giving it to people, even if it helps?

That's a very big ethical question in the medical field. Placebos _do_ help, but only if people believe they will. So is it ethical to lie to a patient and give them a placebo knowing it's likely to help?