Sugar pills are about as effective as antidepressants according to a research

Irving Kirsch, a researcher at the Harvard Medical School, says antidepressants are not much better than placebos in reducing depression in his book: The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth. Kirsch, discloses the lack of evidence for the widely believed theory that depression and anxiety result from a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Kirsch also says that drug companies frequently manipulate scientific data by including only positive results while withholding negative findings from publication. Irving Kirsch and his colleagues examined all the data from experiments with antidepressants and conclude that antidepressants are effective but their function arises mainly from the placebo effect. In other words, sugar pills are about as effective as antidepressants. He said that drug companies withheld this information for many years.