[Guest]

Dear doc,

Here is an interesting extract from a recently published Art Buchwald article which I read today.

He writes “ Here is an interesting story and its true. A new study on depression reveals that people got as much help from a placebo (sugar pill) as they did from a high priced anti-depressant. In the experiment the researchers, working with the depressed people, discovered that when they gave half of them Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft and the the other half a placebo, the latter did just as well, and sometimes better. None of the patients knew which type of pill they were taking.
This is one small step for man and one giant leap for depression
Obviously most worried are the drug companies, who are dreaming up anti-depressant prescriptions”.

I would like to read more of this study. Can you guide me to it?
The following statement in a pharmaceutical textbook had caught my attention sometime back and this study seems to corroborate it “ The usual factors that require a controlled evaluation operate prominently during the drug treatment of depressions. The major depressions are variable in their course and are often self-limiting, so that almost any treatment may appear to be effective if it is started early.”

[Guest]

The study that Buchwald was referring to was in this months American Journal of Psychiatry. The study was actually more interesting than the article. We have known for decades that placebo works well (but not as well as antidepressants in most studies). However, this study showed that the chemical and brain changes caused by Placebo in people who responded to placebo were almost identical to the chemical and brain changes to those that were given the anti depressant. This is clearly a demonstration of the interaction of brain and mind.
[quote] Dear doc,

Here is an interesting extract from a recently published Art Buchwald article which I read today.

He writes “ Here is an interesting story and its true... [/quote]