Antidepressant drugs not effective for moderate depression

You have probably heard about this paper just published in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) in which the authors endeavored "To estimate the relative benefit of medication vs placebo across a wide range of initial symptom severity in patients diagnosed with depression." Although they observed a measurable reduction of symptoms with severe depression, their meta-analysis concluded that "The magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medication compared with placebo increases with severity of depression symptoms and may be minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or moderate symptoms." I address neurotransmitter deficiencies with the safer and more physiologic precursor therapy that restores the ability to make your own neurotransmitters, but our knowledgeable patients know that there is a lot more to treating the biological aspect of depression than recovering neurotransmitter levels: chronic brain inflammation, brain cell capacity to maintain the neuronal membrane, brain hormone levels and receptor function, oxygen delivery, blood sugar and insulin regulation in the brain, suboptimal thyroid dysfunction and more have to be considered on an individual basis.