In the 14 years since they hit the market, Prozac, Paxil, and the other SSRIs have changed the face of depression treatment. Some 7 million Americans now take the antidepressant drugs for everything from generalized anxiety to PMS, but there is growing evidence that their effectiveness may be more marketing hype than miracle cure.
The latest scientific study to weigh in on the subject finds that the antidepressants worked only marginally better than placebos in a group of studies submitted to the FDA. Study participants taking the dummy pills had approximately 80% of the response seen in patients taking one of the six most widely prescribed antidepressants.