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Lyndsey C's picture

Delayed Reaction!

I was looking over my notes and I have a quick response to our first class' discussion about the newspaper headline "Anti-Depressant Studies Unpublished." I was especially interested in this topic because a lack of sufficient data is something we have often come across in a lot of my psychology courses regarding disorders and research, but we haven't really had the opportunity to debate the reprecussions of witheld information. I find it a little disconcerting that in the past few decades, the prescription of drugs appears to far surpass traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, and I am starting to realize that this may be due to the fact that the truth about anti-depressants has yet to be found, especially when researchers hesitate to publish negative test results which might conflict with past research that is more widely accepted. I think people want to believe that drugs will take care of anything and everything, and anything that disputes that is simply discarded. Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of science, which we have discussed to be ever-changing and progressing? Perhaps if more negative test results of antidepressant medications were demonstrated and publicized, there would be less of an over-prescription of medicine, in particular for those who do not neccessarily need it for treatment.

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