TVO The Agenda  Aired: Mar 12 2012

Steve Paiken with…

Dr David Healy University of Cardiff

Dr Kwame McKenzie Senior Scientist and Psychiatrist, CAMH

Roger McIntyre -Head of Mood Disorders Psychopharmacology at UHN

Edward Shorter Prof. Histry of Medicine at U of T.

Steve Paiken: SSRIs – do they work?

McIntyre: “my general verdict is there is efficacy but in my view their efficacy is average at best. That’s a most unfortunate report card after almost six decades”…. ” however there is evidence that for a sub-group of individuals they are life changing”

Edward Shorter – the question pre-supposes there is one kind of depression and one treatment.

Kwame McKenzie “the evidence seems to show if you have a fairly mild depression then the side effects are going to me more severe than the depression; if you have a moderate to severe depression then the depression is going to be worse than the side effects”

“Guidelines from around the world tend to say for mild depression, lay off the antidepressants – unless the depression has been with you for at least two years. There are lot more things you can do for depression besides the anti-depressants”

Paiken: How much more risk of suicide is there, if you’re on SSRIs?

David Healy : ” Let me frame it this way – what the patient often sees is simply the pill they’re being given by their Doctor but what we have is the pill and lots of information about the pill, how it works, how it can be used, what to expect, what the risks are. And we have something of an understanding that the pill is a chemical – a poison – and that we need to use carefully. What  have now is a situation where often the information that comes with the pill is also poison.”

Paikin – how is it that SSRis have something more of bad stories than good?

Kwame McKenzie: “first, they [SSRIs] were over-prescribed, second they were over-hyped”

there’s more, watch, listen for yourself…

http://ww3.tvo.org/video/174669/depressed-over-anti-depressants