"I do know friends and family who have benefited from psychiatric medications, although that could entirely be due to placebo effect." It isn't just you. EVERY

"I do know friends and family who have benefited from psychiatric medications, although that could entirely be due to placebo effect." It isn't just you. EVERYONE knows people that have benefited from medication. I've seen people go from horrible, twisted states of mind turn into happy, functional people within months by taking medication. The idea that this is just a placebo effect is completely counter-intuitive, for too many reasons to list. Don't believe for a second the idea that studies or science have anything to do with the author's opinion. People have been saying the same things ever since these medications were first released, without any facts or reasoning to back up their claims. It isn't a surprise that after 30 years they've been able to come up with a couple of studies to back up what they're saying. What is surprising is that they'd be willing to ignore the tens of thousands of doctors all over the country that have seen these medications work, and the millions of people that have benefited from them. Studies have shown that about 75% of patients treated with antidepressants make a recovery. This is a miracle of modern medicine. The idea that treating depression is a "loose and abstract field" is absurd. Millions of patients suffer from a range of similar systems. They get treatment, those symptoms are gone. There is nothing abstract about it. Yes, patients react differently to different medications, which is true for thousands of non-psychiatric conditions as well. In these cases, doctors also use trial and error. Public figures against antidepressants are no better than Christian scientists who encourage patients not to seek treatment for cancer. They're also much more influential: they've persuaded hundred of thousands of people suffering from depression not to seek treatment.