I will dutifully report on yet another professional’s opinion about the research literature on antidepressants. This time the “antidepressant is just a placebo effect” argument comes from a psychologist.
Irving Kirsch, a professor of psychology at the University of Hull in the U.K., says that antidepressants are nothing more than fancy and expensive placebos. He, of course, does not say this in a vacuum. No, of course not. He’s saying this in promoting his new book, The Emperor’s New Drugs (which, you know, is a “funny” play on the phrase “the emperor’s new clothes”).
Read on for a quick deconstruction of his argument (his argument as presented in an interview online, anyways).