Studying New Antidepressants: If There Were a Light at the End of the Tunnel, Could We See It?

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The availability of so many newer antidepressants necessitatesthat clinicians make daily judgments about the relative utility of these medications. Traditionally, it hasbeen assumed that antidepressants that have passed the reviewprocess of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA) are (more or less) comparably effective.¹ If treatmentoptions are truly comparably effective, then factorssuch as convenience, tolerability, safety, and cost are typicallyused to determine which medications are selectedfirst, second, and third in a sequence of choices.²‘ ‹