A recent study (cited here) questions whether drug trials assessing antidepressants relate to the people who actually use them. Such trials often involve individuals with more severe depression, who don’t have any other comorbidities. The problem is this isn’t often who the drugs end up getting prescribed for:

After assessing 2,855 patients treated with citalopram, a commonly prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor for mood disorders, study authors concluded that fewer than one in four, or 22.2 percent, of the patients met the usual criteria for inclusion in phase III antidepressant trials.

So hopefully this research will lead to more trials being done on a more representative sample, so people can be more informed about how effective different drugs are for a more general population. The lesson for Doctors – and anyone looking up research – is to be aware of who are in the drug trials, and whether this is generalizable to other people. Because antidepressants are effective for some people, but it’s important to know who those people are.

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