Antidepressant news: Are antidepressants more effective than placebo?
Begley’s Newsweek article not only may surprise you in its description of how strong the placebo effect is for antidepressants, but in its description of how such medications are approved by the FDA. She describes how the FDA, at present, does not have a mechanism by which trials with negative results (showing that a drug was ineffective) are accounted for in its pharmaceutical approval process. That means that a drug shown to be no better than placebo in six studies, but shown to be somewhat effective in two others, can be approved for widespread use.