Il Prozac “non è migliore del placebo” nel trattamento dei bambini affetti da depressione, dicono gli esperti
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/20/prozac-no-better-than-placebo-for-treating-children-with-depression-experts-say
di Alarming-Shop2392
8 commenti
I’m sure someone will tell me why I’m wrong, but the amount of psychiatric drugs we give to children feels wrong.
Interesting results, especially in the context fluoxetine is a first-line treatment for moderate to severe depression.
Personally, I prefer non-pharmacological interventions but wouldn’t want to deprive someone of this, if they feel like it’s helping or the personal benefits outweigh the costs.
The ethical question is, if we know a treatment has a non meaningful effect on a biological system but does have an effect on improving symptoms due to its placebo properties, should we consider this one that works?
It’s a bit of a grey area, but as the article points out, SSRIs can also lead to suicidal ideations, which is the major cause of mortality in depression.
I sense the broader message is that we need to develop new and better interventions.
Everyone is different, for me it did nothing, but I had it in liquid form. (couldn’t swallow pills until my twenties…) I tried different meds over the years and found sertraline was the best one for me. Still have off days of course, but who doesn’t nowadays.
Antidepressants without therapy are useless.
Even with therapy, in ideal patients, they’re of questionable effectiveness.
Antidepressants are only good for treating chemical imbalance type depression. If you’re depressed because of some outside factor, then they won’t get rid of the cause of your depression.
Hate to be pessimistic but I fear this will be used to deny kids who *are* helped by it.
Antidepressants are broadly a pretty ineffective group of medications, and some are worse than others, and the NHS loves to treat patients as averages. But in reality, every med is a gamble and people respond as individuals.
Of course, for as long as CAMHS fails to actually support kids, it doesn’t really matter, because anti depressants on their own are pretty useless.
Edit: yes, seems kids who benefit are going to lose access.
HRT made more difference to my mental health than about 5 different antidepressants over the years, the NHS wont give me hrt for another 5-10 years, meanwhile they throw antidepressants at kids regardless of effectiveness or side effects
I worry that the children in this study didn’t have moderate to severe depression to meet the NICE criteria.
For children at risk of suicide I can’t imagine it’s ethical to offer a placebo. But now they might be declined one…
Severe depression is very much a physical illness. Motor retardation, severe thinking difficulties etc.
Edit: also often antidepressants are more effective in combination with therapy than either alone.