Antidepressants don’t work

From the earth-shattering news that got no “play” file: “Antidepressants Hardly Help,” says Time Magazine.

Researchers published their finding (in the journal PLoS Medicine), claiming patients “at the upper end of the very severely depressed category” experience benefit from drugs like Paxil, Efexor, and Prozac. For everyone else: not so much.

It was big news in Europe and elsewhere, but this topic is still a hard one to discuss — publicly — in the U.S., where mental illness rates a high reading on the “taboo scale.” It rated not a mention on the NPR “health” section.

But that doesn’t mean Americans aren’t heavily into antidepressants. A study in 2004 found one in every three visits to a doctor by women was for an antidepressant prescription.