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The Safety of Antidepressants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

John A. Henry
John A. Henry*
Affiliation:
National Poisons Unit, Guy's Hospital, London SE1 9RT
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Extract

It is no exaggeration to say that, in the 30 years since antidepressants were introduced, they have revolutionised the management of depression, thus fulfilling, at least for depressive illness, Paracelsus' prophetic wish. We now have a group of drugs which can induce remission in a disease which is disabling and not infrequently fatal. Despite intensive research, however, our understanding of the mechanism of action of these drugs is still largely hypothetical. Even our methods of evaluation are sufficient only to enable one to decide whether an antidepressant drug is effective or ineffective; there is no experimental method which can rank them in an overall order of potency, and perhaps this should not be the aim, since there must be subgroups of depressed patients who will respond differently to any one agent.

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Annotation
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 160 , Issue 4 , April 1992 , pp. 439 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992 

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