Posted 3/12/2018 7:26 AM (GMT -5)
The most comprehensive study on them has recently been published, showing mostly modest effects.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/upshot/do-antidepressants-work.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=2&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F03%2F12%2Fupshot%2Fdo-antidepressants-work.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
"The researchers found 74 studies, with more than 12,500 patients, for drugs approved between 1987 and 2004. about half of these trials had “positive” results, in that the antidepressant performed better than a placebo; the other half were “negative.” But if you looked only in the published literature, you’d get a much different picture. Nearly all of the positive studies are there. Only three of the negative studies appear in the literature as negative. Twenty-two were never published, and 11 were published but repackaged so that they appeared positive.
"The take-home message from these two studies was that the effectiveness of antidepressants had been overstated, and that the benefit might be limited to far fewer patients than were actually using the drugs.
"The benefits also applied only to people who were suffering from major depression, specifically in the short term. In other words, this study provides evidence that when people are found to have acute major depression, treatment with antidepressants works to improve outcomes in the first two months of therapy."