Antidepressants are not all created equal.

摘要

Even psychiatrists can sing the blues. Not just because of the current economic depression, but because of recent research findings. A series of pivotal effectiveness studies1"3 in psychiatry-STAR*D, CATIE, and STEP.BD-have compared real-world performance of various treatments in depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. STAR*D showed that virtually all antidepressant strategies had low and similar efficacy in major depression.1 CATIE showed low effectiveness and similar comparability of antipsychotics.2 And STEP.BD showed that antidepressants are not effective for bipolar depression.3 At the same time, depression prevalence rates are rising and major depression is due to be the leading cause of disability worldwide.