60 Minutes asks: When it comes treating depression, is there a placebo effect?
“The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people,” says Irving Kirsch, associate director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School.
During a 2012 interview taped for 60 Minutes, Kirsch details some of his earlier studies – including a clinical trial where patients with osteoarthritis underwent knee surgery (while others just had their knees opened and sewed back up). The result? Patients who received the placebo procedure actually performed better, in terms of walking and climbing, than their peers who received surgery!
(To watch excerpts from Kirsch’s interview, please click here.)
So how do placebo pills stack up to the effectiveness of real antidepressants? Combining information from drug companies’ clinical trials with unpublished trials submitted to the FDA (which he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act), Kirsch found that,
Love that the media (60 minutes) is going public with this. So much about the placebo effect gets overshadowed by main stream pharmacology. Thanks for keeping us current Jessica!
I just read your article on Antidepressants versus Placebos and want to thank you for it.