An exploration of placebo effects and their use in the treatment of depression

Abstract

Large placebo effects have been measured in the treatment of depression with psychotherapies and psychopharmaceuticals. Antidepressant medication has been shown to be marginally better at treating depression than placebo antidepressants, however, flawed study designs may be the contributing to this marginal difference. Psychotherapies have also been implicated in being largely placebo treatments for depression, based on the historical trends of placebo interventions, the current definition of placebos, and the results of component control trials. The emerging idea that our best treatments for depression are largely (if not entirely) placebos suggests that the act of receiving care is an effective treatment for depression.