We don't receive news about unsuccessful antidepressant studies

The New England Journal of Medicine has published a review of antidepressant trials and has noted that nearly a third of the studies that showed an unfavorable result were not published. This, according to a follow-up story in the Wall Street Journal, "inflated the reported effectiveness of all 12 of the antidepressants studied, which were approved between 1987 and 2004."

Further, reports the New York Times, it's a reminder that finding an effective antidepressant is still very much a trial-and-error process. The Times quotes Dr. Erick Turner, a psychiatrist and former F.D.A. reviewer who now works at Oregon Health and Sciences University and the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "The bottom line for people considering an antidepressant, I think, is that they should be more circumspect about taking it,” he said, “and not be so shocked if it doesn’t work the first time and think something’s wrong with them.”