Suffering From an Overly Sunny View of Antidepressants?

According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), studies on antidepressants showing negative results are published less frequently than studies that show positive results -- and the underrepresentation may be generating a false sense of how effective these drugs are.

"Not only were positive results more likely to be published, but studies that were not positive, in our opinion, were often published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome," wrote the authors of "Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy."

The authors obtained Food and Drug Administration reviews for studies on 12 antidepressants -- 74 FDA-registered studies in total -- and then considered how many and what type were published. Notably, only one of the 37 that were viewed by the agency as having positive results was not published, while 22 of the 37 studies that were considered to have negative results were not published. And 11 others that the FDA asserted were negative were published in a way that the authors felt conveyed positive (and potentially misleading) results. ...