Antidepressant Effectiveness Life Sciences Essay Paper (Essay Sample)

Antidepressant Effectiveness
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Antidepressant Effectiveness
The use of antidepressant medication to treat depression is surrounded by controversies. Some authors have questioned the effectiveness and the quality of this kind of medication compared to dummy medicine. According to Fournier et al. (2010), antidepressant medication is one of the recent treatments for a patient with major depressive disorders though it registers insignificant difference in its effects compared to the use of placebos. Kirsch (2014) notes that antidepressant medication produces same effects as placebos and causes a lot of side effects and that any antidepressant positive change is as a result of enhanced placebos. However, Horder et al. (2011) say that, there are no adequate studies that have been done to quantify the effectiveness of antidepressants and that the negative perceptions of the usefulness of antidepressant have no basis. Horder et al. (2010) also note that psychopharmacology base their antidepressant treatments on experience and not the evidence of how well the antidepressants work. The arguments thus indicate the continued disagreements on the usefulness of antidepressant medication in depressed patients.
Antidepressant medication has thus not proven effective on a patient, and it is no advisable for a patient to take antidepressant drugs. Fournier et al. (2010) noted that the effectiveness of antidepressant medicine varies depending on the level of depression of a patient. The antidepressant medication shows no effects to a patient with mild and moderate depression and thus this kind of drugs are not superior to dummy medicine and any difference in effect were negligible at this levels. Fournier et al. (2010) noted that antidepressants effects to a patient diagnosed with very severe depression symptoms are significant. In this level of depression thus, the effects of antidepressants are superior and outdoes the effects of placebos.