Tag: Anti-depressants

Anti-depressants and Fiscal Stimulus

Jason Shafrin7 Comments

Conventional wisdom holds that physicians can use anti-depressants to treat long term depression.  Many patients, however, spend years or even decades taking these drugs.  Is this how the inventors of anti-depressants believe they would be used? Author Robert Whitaker believes not: You find that even with major depression, in the pre-antidepressant era – and this…

More Randomization Problems

Jason Shafrin

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are the “gold standard” for medical studies. Nevertheless, even RCTs have their problems. An NBER working paper by Ludwig, Marcotte and Norberg points highlights some of these issues. The authors examine whether or not anti-depressants reduce suicide rates (they find that anti-depressants do reduce suicide rates). Unfortunately, using data from RCTs…