Sugar pills or anti depressants?

Today’s claim that some anti depressant drugs are little or no better than pretend pills for all but the most severe kinds of depression poses some interesting questions about medicine on the NHS...

Depression is all in the mind. Some depressed people come to see their MPs. They may have a genuine case for an MP, but sometimes they are externalising their unhappiness. I take the problem they tell me they have seriously, but sometimes have to explain that I do not think anything can be done about it as I do not wish to raise false expectations. It is a pattern I well remember, from years of family experience. The depressed person often thinks there is an objective external cause of the unhappiness. If they can change their job, their home, the conduct of their wife or husband, their friends or their neighbours, they believe their unhappiness will vanish. All too often they discover that having made the change they are still unhappy, so the search for another cause begins and the pressure for another change builds up to try to appease the depression gods.

I posted a comment to this over eight hours ago and it still ' awaits moderation'. I suspect it won't get published at all -  possibly because the previous one I sent him was, shall we say, slightly offensive. Anyway, if the silly old Vulcan won't publish my comment I'll have to do it myself, here:

Firstly, this research says little about what goes on in the medical profession and a lot about what goes on in research departments of universities. We are inundated with ‘reseach’ results and we pick out the ones that we rather like the sound of, as you have done here. Remember how we were advised to only eat two eggs a week? Whoops! Or how Type A personality posed a greater risk of heart attacks? Whoops! To say nothing of the research that has been shown to be based on poor methodology or even fraud.

Secondly, your comments on depression betray a deep ignorance. Depression and unhappiness are not the same thing. Miserable people are everywhere and there are plenty of cheerful, even funny, depressives - check out most comedians. However, you can be forgiven for your views. After all some years ago a brilliant young psychiatrist, Garth Wood, wrote The Myth of Neurosis - Overcoming the Illness Excuse (very popular in many circles) where he said much the same thing as you have. He claimed that unless you satisfied certain very strict criteria you weren’t ‘really’ depressed and should jolly well buck your ideas up. If you were functioning and not losing weight etc then you certainly weren’t depressed. A few years later in fine physical health, tanned and on holiday he killed himself using the suicide kit he had kept in his briefcase for several months. Maybe he just needed a break. Oh, wait! he was on holiday when he did it. Whoops!

Now, where did I put my Prozac?

UPDATE: Fair dos, my comment was posted after waiting 24 hours to be approved, and he even  added a short reply.