Clinical Studies On Depression. herbs for depression ?

Q.remember, to the extent that herbs (like St. John's Wort) do function as antidepressants, they can also have the side effects of prescription antidepressants. Just because they're "natural" doesn't mean they won't do anything unpleasant

A.There have been several dozen studies looking at the effectiveness of St. John's wort. The British Medical Journal recently conducted a study of 23 randomized trials involving over 1,700 patients. The patients had mild to moderate depression. St. John's wort was just as effective as standard antidepressants. However, none of the studies exceeded 12 weeks in duration making them less than ideal. Fifty percent of patients taking St. John's wort improved with respect to their depression as opposed to only 23 percent of patients that were taking placebo. In several studies, St. John's wort was more effective than standard antidepressants for mild to moderate depression. To my knowledge, there are no studies proving the effectiveness of St. John's wort in severe depression or manic-depressive illness. I would not recommend starting with St. John's wort in patients with severe depression until St. John's wort has been proven to be as effective as standard antidepressants. an herb that has shown promise in treating mild to moderate depression, does not seem to work against a more severe form of the disease, according to a study being published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The herb worked no better than a placebo in a study of 200 adults diagnosed with major depression. In an earlier analysis of some 23 studies on St. John's wort on patients with less severe forms of the disease, the herb was found to be significantly superior to a placebo and just as effective as standard antidepressant drugs. But you'd really have to read the whole article to get these snippets. The combined response/remission rate for SJW was 40.8%. The similar combination for placebo was 23.9%. Only 4.9% remitted on placebo, which is quite astounding, as typical placebo remission rates stand at 25 or 30% in other clinical trials. How can we account for this finding? Simple. Consider the subject pool. Only subjects with extended periods of current depression (non-remitters) were included in the study; the authors state that the mean (SD) duration of current major depressive disorder was 2.3 (6.3) years in the treated group and 2.7 (5.6) years in the placebo group. In other words, the subjects seem to have been specifically selected to be non-responders. As there was no active comparator (e.g. a proven antidepressant) in this trial, there is no way to know if *any* treatment could have been successful here, let alone SJW. But, SJW was significantly more effective than placebo, even though the stated conclusion is at odds with the evidence.

Other Questions :

Depression And Chronic Back Pain. Back from the eye doctor ?

There is another place maybe for those shots, but it might make it difficult to sit! Could you get the shot/s in a different place each day? One day in abdomen, one in legs, one in upper arms maybe? I mean switch around?Between the pain pill...

Clinical Psychologist Depression?

A worse problem is that depression is hard to diagnose reliably, and a few health professionals aren't happy diagnosing depression anyway - they sometimes have old-fashioned ideas about there being some social stigma attached to such a diagnosi...

Depression worse after CPAP ?

I have been using a CPAP for about 4 months.. I have noticed that since I started using it, although I have more energy overall, my depression seems to be getting worse.. I think I read somewhere that lack of sleep may actually help to mitigate...

Twin Studies Link Depression to Genetic/Biological Causes ?

Much of what we know about the genetic influence of clinical depression is based upon research that has been done with identical twins. Identical twins are very helpful to researchers since they both have the exact same genetic code. It has bee...

CHILDHOOD & TEEN DEPRESSION ?

My son,18 yrs.,has just been diagnosed with depression and has been persribed celexa. He is our first born out of 3 and has been a quiet child since he was a toddler. (Very active & difficult as a toddler). His scholastic achievements have be...