> If they were indeed a permanent, long-term solution, depression should by now have become a minor issue in society.
Chemotherapy is a permanent, long-term solution for cancer, and yet cancer has not become a minor issue in society. Anti-depressants are life-saving medication for many many people, but not everyone gets the right dose, not everyone continues taking them, and in some people they plain don't work.
Claiming that they're somehow not a solution for depression because they don't work for everyone, all the time, is logical fallacies all the way down.
> Yet it has not made a dent in hospital admissions
This is a stupid sentence. First, it's not sourced. Secondly, in the hospital admissions of whom? New patients or admissions of patients on anti-depressants? The first is an absolutely pointless statistic because -- who knew?! -- medicine that hasn't been administered doesn't work.
If he's claiming that over the group of people taking anti-depressants, their rates of admission post anti-depressants doesn't decline, that's still a shitty statistic, for a whole range of what should be obvious reasons, but I can spell out for you in a further comment if needed, but start with the fact that most people _develop_ mental health issues as they get older, and almost anyone who's hospitalized for a mental health issue will get medicated at that point moving forward, and anyone who's been hospitalized once for depression is dramatically more likely to be hospitalized again.
Unless the exact statistic being cited here is that there's no difference in readmission rates for patients who have been hospitalized for depression between those who took their medicine and those who didn't, it's absolutely ridiculous to be using to support his argument. Did I mention he didn't cite it?
> The number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past two decades
So? It seems like "common sense" that as a society we're better at talking about mental health than we used to be, and referring (rather than simply jailing) the mentally ill than we used to be. I bet his source (oh look, he didn't fucking cite it again) attributes this to many many many other factors rather than the non efficacy of anti-depressants
> and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants.
His premise is wrong. Antidepressants treat symptoms, not the cause. And never has antidepressants been regarded as a permanent, long-term solution for depression. He doesn't seem informed.
It also doesn't inspire confidence that he made statements on their efficacy without even trying to address confounding factors (say, rising rates of depression due societal/economic conditions).
