Antidepressants: All in Your Head?
By Kate McHugh, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent
August 15, 2007
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The relapse some patients experience during antidepressant treatment may be linked to an initial "placebo response" more than to the drug's ineffectiveness.
Researchers from Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University in Providence, R.I. report about one-third of patients treated for depression respond to placebo medications. Over time, the positive placebo effects may wear off, causing doctor and patient to believe the medication has become ineffective when, in reality, it didn't work in the first place.
Study author Mark Zimmerman, M.D., director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, told Ivanhoe, "The placebo effect is not simply a psychological effect. There is a medical basis to the placebo effect. There are bio-chemical changes in the brain that go along with improving on placebo. Nonetheless, placebo over these past few years have taken on a negative connotation."
Dr. Zimmerman says it's important to understand individuals are capable of bringing about improvement by taking a more active role in their mental health rather than a more passive one. "In clinical practice, when someone gets better, is it the medicine that got them better, or is it the nonspecific aspects of treatment, such as the expectancy of hope, talking to a professional, having someone there listening to them, empathizing with them? We don't know," Dr. Zimmerman said, adding there are no biological tests to differentiate between placebo responses and actual medication effects.
SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Mark Zimmerman, M.D.; The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2007;68:1271-1276
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