Admits that antidepressants ARE effective for severe depression. I have seen people who were suicidal completely turn around after receiving the correct medication.
That was my impression as well. I had two different colleagues battle depression. I watched them seem to wilt further and further as the days passed - slipping deeper into depression. I was at times afraid they would commit suicide. Drugs stabilized them while they worked out their emotional problems.
Consumer Reports did a fairly interesting study in 1995. Here’s an excerpt of the abstract: “Abstract. Consumer Reports (1995, November) published an article which concluded that patients benefited very substantially from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication plus psychotherapy. Furthermore, no specific modality of psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder; psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not differ in their effectiveness as treaters; and all did better than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring. Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was limited by insurance or managed care did worse. “
http://horan.asu.edu/cpy702readings/seligman/seligman.html
Excerpt written by Martin Seligman
True and ditto.