Patient’s self-ratings? Bah, what do they know?

Three articles that caught my eye.

First, a meta-analysis on whether antidepressants improve overall wellness for young people. (One issue was that few studies have looked at overall wellness.)

Though limited by a small number of trials, our analyses suggest that antidepressants offer little to no benefit in improving overall well-being among depressed children and adolescents.

Another looks at attempts to see whether antidepressants reduce suicidality.

Based on measures taken pre- and post-treatment, the authors found that all treatments, including the pill placebo with clinical management, significantly reduced scores on both the interview and self-report measures of suicidality, with all having a medium effect size. According to the interview measure, interpersonal psychotherapy and antidepressant medication reduced suicidality more than the pill placebo with clinical management. No differences were found between treatments using the self-report measure.

Finally, an article that suggests that electronic health records and real world data are going to have a significant impact on drug development. I don’t question it, but it’s a lot easier for me to see this having major impact on evaluating drugs that have been approved and in use with patients.