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I do a lot of research on the placebo effect, not just in depression but in irritable bowel syndrome, pain, arthritis of the knee, migraine, asthma.

Research shows that if patients believe they are taking the real drug, they are more confident of improving and, so, improve even if they are actually on the placebo. Conversely, if they suspect they are taking the placebo, their expectancy of improvement declines, and so does their improvement.

There is a major problem with reliance on placebos, like most vitamins and antioxidants. Everyone gets upset about Big Science, Big Pharma, but they love Big Placebo.

Perhaps 10 percent of patients who are prescribed antidepressants are really benefiting from the drugs' active ingredients.

Antidepressants can have troubling side effects and are addictive for some people.

The doctor-patient relationship is critical to the placebo effect.

Like most people, I woke up one day to find that everyone I knew was taking antidepressants, and since I wasn't, I figured that I must be the cause of their depression.

A placebo is a phony cure that works. This is very hard for the medical profession to get their teeth around because they hate placebos, but scientifically, placebos work in about 30% of cases that are psychogenic diseases.

Perhaps anti-depressants should be best reserved for the very extreme cases and, more importantly, for those who do not respond to alternative forms of interventions.

There seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients.