What was worrying was that some or many people who need this medication would stop taking it, with results that could be most serious for them.
It is true that saner views were expressed later in the article, but damage may already have been done to vulnerable people’s confidence by the overly ambitious headline (“Antidepressants Don’t Work – Study”) and by the initial paragraphs that followed.
Dr Allen Fraser, the outgoing Chairman of the Royal Australia New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, was quoted in the second half of the article, and made statements that critiqued the Hull University Study, but somehow his thoughts were not attributed sufficient weight to temper the alarming tone of the opening paragraph quoted above.
Fortunately, Allen Fraser was interviewed more fully on Radio NZ’s Nine to Noon programme the same day, and put the Hull University study in some perspective. The study was not new, but a review of already completed studies and only 10% of patients were included. Of the people that were reviewed, the longest they were reviewed was over a six-week period, and mostly over just four weeks. Dr Fraser pointed out that antidepressant medication is known to be effective when taken over months rather than weeks.
He further pointed out that we have known for years that milder non-biological forms of depression respond better to some form of counselling or psychotherapy.
But where was the NZ Herald’s evidence that tens of thousands of New Zealanders were experiencing this milder reactive type of depression?
Within the week there was an alarming opinion piece published in the NZ Herald, “Depression Symptom of a Sick Society” by Garth George. The writer referred to the Hull university study and began “So the ‘experts’ have finally concluded that antidepressants have no ‘clinically significant’ effect. Which means that the $28 million spent on 720,000-odd prescriptions for them last year in New Zealand is money largely wasted.”
The Herald editor gave support by publishing beside Mr George’s article a quarter page picture of John Kirwan (included because of John Kirwan’s advertisements for the National Depression Initiative) with a caption which read: “Blues: The British study found that anti-depressants have no ‘clinically significant’ effect on depression.”
In the Garth George article I observed a rather grumpy, even belittling, tone. He seems to assert that not only is antidepressant medication unhelpful but so also is counselling. Toward the end of the article we read: “Is it any wonder that so many of us live in a constant state of unhappiness which doctors and others in the ‘helping professions’ are only too quick to label depression? And to throw a pill at. Or to direct some counselling at.”
It’s almost as if we are expected to heal ourselves or avoid depression altogether if the following paragraph is taken seriously: “Abraham Lincoln had it sussed. ‘Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be,’ he said.” But what happens when some of our decisions are made at unconscious levels and have disastrous effects upon our health? This is a subject addressed neither by Garth George, nor apparently by Abraham Lincoln.
Mr George’s overall point appears to be that depression is a malaise of the spirit, and without a belief in God, “men and women who suffer from depression have nowhere to turn.” As a believer in God I find this statement excluding. For those who cannot, or wish not, to have faith, is there no hope at all? And has not history shown us many people of faith also suffering from depression?
Even allowing for media headline exaggeration to catch attention, neither of the articles mentioned above, in my view, helpfully extended support to those who are depressed, nor informed them wisely about their condition and the various treatments available.
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