alt Hacker NewsYeah, I’m open to the idea that their effectiveness may have been overestimated and they’re overprescribed as a result. But this “I can’t believe we’ve normalized antidepressants” “there are better solutions than drugs” stuff is just moralizing.
Yeah, I’m open to the idea that their effectiveness may have been overestimated and they’re overprescribed as a result. But this “I can’t believe we’ve normalized antidepressants” “there are better solutions than drugs” stuff is just moralizing.
I suppose it can be moralizing, and probably is in the parent comment.
For me I still feel the surprise because I've followed the evidence carefully for well over a decade, and the methodological problems and lack of evidence for meaningful effectiveness have always been clear. I.e. it is clear standardized effect sizes are meaningless, and you need to determine important differences, as this is just basic science, but only a tiny handful of papers ever bothered.
So it feels very much like "how can we have normalized something so incredibly scientifically shaky", i.e. for me the moralizing is not "drugs are bad, how are we normalizing drugs" it is "how can an entire medical field and society so recklessly adopt something so obviously weakly supported". I.e. my dismay is more about the weak epistemic standards of society than it is about drugs.