Disclaimer: Any views or advice in this weblog should not be taken as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, especially if you know you have a specific health complaint. Prescribed medication should not be stopped or varied without conventional medical advice. Please remember that homeopathic remedies and other health measures should be individually-selected to match the whole person, not just the unwelcome symptom. For chronic, severe or long-standing complaints, or if you are pregnant, elderly or on orthodox medications, seek professional advice rather than self-prescribing.

Study says SSRI antidepressants may be no better than a placebo
Last week it was announced that a recent study led by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull had found that SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil (also known as Seroxat) only helped the most severely depressed people and worked no better than a placebo in many patients.

Being "just a placebo" is something of which homeopathy is often accused – even though it is often used to treat animals and babies, none of which are aware that they’re meant to get better.

Last week’s reports stated that the researchers found that compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressant medications did not yield clinically significant improvements in patients who initally had moderate or even very severe depression. The study found that significant benefits occurred only in the most severely depressed patients.

Mary Ann Rhyne, a spokesman for Seroxat-maker GSK, was forced to rely on anecdotal evidence to defend the drug, saying, "The authors have failed to acknowledge the very positive benefit these treatments have provided to patients and their families who are dealing with depression and they are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice." In other words, the study claims that the drugs aren’t that effective, but we find that many patients say they work in practice.

When is anecdotal evidence acceptable?
Among the studies into the use of homeopathy to treat a range of problems are very many that show positive evidence from the patients themselves.

So why is it that, when users of homeopathy insist that their homeopathic remedies work for them, their evidence is dismissed and ridiculed as being, "merely anecdotal" and they themselves are accused (by the so-called quackbusters who are often so anti-homeopathy) of being deluded?

Marathon runner beat depression using homeopathy
Kate Charles, renowned marathon runner, who in 2006 completed a grand slam by running a marathon at the North Pole, as well as on every continent of the world (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4896170.stm) is happy for me to tell you that she found the homeopathy I prescribed for her a while back extremely helpful during her battle to overcome depression.

In fact, she gave us a testimonial that’s posted on our website, and fought to make the point that homeopathy helped her depression when she was interviewed by the Daily Mail three years ago. Sadly, "homeopathy beats depression," wasn’t as appealing a story for the editor at the time as "running beats homeopathy."

Given that the Mail are running the story on their website again with no mention of how much homeopathy helped, Kate’s happy for me to make it clear here that anti-depressants did not solve her debilitating depression, and that both running and homeopathy were instrumental in her recovery, as well as in helping her to wean herself off the Prozac she had taken for seven years.

Antidepressants don’t heal the root causes
I’m not saying that antidepressants don’t work - in fact, I’ve blogged here before on this subject, saying: "Antidepressants have an important role as a short-term emergency measure, but while they can insulate us from our feelings, making it easier to cope for a time, they do nothing to help us to understand and heal the root causes of our depression. For chronic (rather than reactive) depression, when we stop taking the pills, the depression’s often still there."

However, if this study is right, it seems that many people may be taking antidepressant drugs with serious potential side-effects (GSK admitted in 2006 that Seroxat can cause patients to become suicidal), but which may be ineffective.

For more information about natural healthcare solutions and homeopathy, visit www.phoenixhomeopathy.com/testimonials.php