According to a recent meta-analysis on the efficacy of antidepressants published in the early online publication of Lancet on January 29, 2009, the best antidepressants are Zoloft and Lexapro.
You can read the abstract by clicking here.
I pass this information on to my clients who might benefit from an antidepressant on a regular basis. I suggest Citalopram (Celexa), the earlier form of Lexapro, because you can get it in a generic and it is cheap, about $4.00 for 30, 20mg., pills at Walmart.
Antidepressants don't work, by the way, much better than a placebo which helps about 30% of patients. If clients ask me about antidepressants I usually ask "What have you heard? Do you think they will help?" and go from there. If the client thinks they will help, they very well might help. If not from the psychopharmacological effect, then from the psychological hope and expectancy.
I want to be clear, I am not giving medical advice here. I am only providing information, and my clinical observations from my practice, and what I have read in journals, reports, etc.
I, myself, take 20mg. of Citalopram per day and find it helpful in a subtle way. Whether it is biochemical or psychological I am not sure, but I believe it helps me. Having said this, many studies have shown that over all psychotherapy is a more effective treatment for depression than psychotropic drugs. This advocacy for psychotherapy is heresy in this day in age when pharmaceutical companies are pushing their drugs and physicians hand out samples to their patients hoping for a quick and easy "biochemical" fix, but pyschotherapy gets better outfcomes according to the best outcome research findings available.
No comments:
Post a Comment