Anti-depressants 'a waste of time'

Mental health campaigners said millions of people with depression were not getting sufficient access to talking therapies due to GPs being over reliant on prescribing drugs such as Prozac.

It follow a review of clinical trials that found that such drugs had no more effect than a placebo for mildly depressed patients and for most people suffering severe depression.

The study showed that even trials suggesting benefit for severely depressed people did not provide evidence of clear clinical benefit, researchers said.

Dr Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Unit, said the findings were "fantastically important".

A group of experts, led by Professor Irving Kirsch, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull, analysed 47 clinical trials using data released under Freedom of Information rules by the US Food and Drug Administration.

The researchers looked at four commonly-used anti-depressants and the clinical trials submitted to gain licensing approval. They included anti-depressants regularly prescribed in the UK, including fluoxetine (Prozac), venlafaxine (Efexor) and paroxetine (Seroxat).

They found little evidence of benefit when analysing both unpublished and published data from the drug companies. Furthermore, the seemingly good results for very severely depressed patients came from the fact a patient's response to the dummy pill decreased rather than any notable increase in their response to antidepressants.

Professor Kirsch said: "The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking antidepressants is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments."

Alison Cobb, policy officer at mental health charity Mind, said: "This research is a serious challenge to the predominance of drugs in treating depression. Nine out of 10 GPs say they've been forced to dish out drugs because they don't have proper access to talking treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy, which are recommended as the first-line treatment for mild to moderate depression."