Ken Pope, a colleague of Dr. Leslie Becker-Phelps, pointed out this article Monday posted in The New York Times.  In the article the author, Dr. Richard Friedman, adds more commentary on the JAMA study, much of which is similar to Peter Kramer’s on Slate’s XX.  It is good to hear criticism from multiple sources.

The study was narrow:

• only 6 of 23 qualifying studies allowed access to data (for a total of 718 subjects)
• only 2 anti-depressants were studied when there are “25 or so on the market.”
• the study excluded trials with a “placebo washout period … (often the first two weeks)”–which therefore muddied the picture by combining the first two week effect with the placebo effect.
• and after all this filtering and narrowing, only a few subjects remained in the study with “very mild depression,” so the conclusions were based on minimum data

Friedman writes:

And the real test of an antidepressant is not just whether it can lift someone out of depression; it is whether it can keep depression from returning. For a vast majority of people with depression, the illness is chronic. Relapses and low-level symptoms between episodes are common.  Scores of studies show that antidepressants are highly effective in preventing relapse; on average, the risk of relapse in patients who continue on an antidepressant is one-half to one-third of those who are switched to a placebo.

Experts may disagree about what constitutes the best treatment for depression, and for whom. But there is no question that the safety and efficacy of antidepressants rest on solid scientific evidence.