Here is an interview with a chap from the Black Dog Institute. It goes for just under seven minutes.

He feels this latest bit of research is flawed.

The flaw: the research studies that find no difference to placebo are randomised control trials and for ethical reasons, randomised control trials are more inclined to rule people out than in: in other words, no one is included if they are suicidal, if they ill enough to be an inpatient, if they have anxiety, other personality or psych. issues. And people are paid for their participation. So they aren't representative of people suffering depression. They represent only a portion of people suffering fairly mild depression with zero complications.

He likens it to testing a drug for pneumonia on people suffering from a cold.

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He also suggests that it's a rehash of a similar article published by the same researcher a couple of years ago, which got headlines back then too. This is mentioned about half way through the interview as a side issue, but I take it to mean he thinks the guy is on a bit of crusade.

Nice to know I'm not the only person that wondered about that: bells went off for me as soon as I saw references to FOI legislation. Not because there's anything wrong with using that, in fact that's precisely why it's there, but because I feel the use of FOI has been presented as though that supports the veracity of his findings. It does not prove anything one way or the other.

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I guess one of the downsides of the normalisation of depression (ie- it's a nasty disease that can happen to anyone and can be treated and recovered from) is that everyone now thinks they know what it is. This simultaneously relieves people of stigma but creates new problems when a presumption is made of understanding where understanding has not actually occurred.

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Cripes, I do declare I've just had an attack of clear thinking, albeit somewhat diluted by verbal dysentery. I've spent the day sprawled with my feet up - I think it's paying off.

( Medical blahblahblah. )