Antidepressants...Do They Really Work?

Manufacturers of prescription antidepressants have to be happy. Millions of people pop these pills every day. These products swell the corporate till and make stock holders very, very happy. So you can just imagine that the latest study on the effectiveness of antidepressants caused a wee bit of depression in the drug company boardrooms. In fact, executives would love it if you would stop reading this article and forget about the study and pop a few more pills.

Antidepressants are no more effective than placebo [fake] pills for the vast majority of people suffering from depression. That’s right. According to a meta-analysis study done at the University of Pennsylvania, these drugs are only effective for people with severe depression. And that’s a long way from the garden variety blues.

So, if there’s no point in taking these drugs for mild or moderate depression [who needs all the side effects if the pills aren’t going to help anyway], what can you do? In a word, exercise. Exercise releases endorphins, the great feel good chemical that your body makes with a little bit of encouragement from you.You don’t have to take my word using exercise to stem depression, visit the Mayo Clinic website for a good summary on the subject. Beyond that, exercise is one of the magic bullets for good health, done regularly it lowers the risk of many life threatening diseases. And let’s face it, nothing is more depressing than being unhealthy. So, start working out and get on the road to saying goodbye to the blues.

— Richard Fink, DC, FIAMA

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