What's the best recent empirical assessment of SSRI/SNRI effectiveness which deals with heterogeneity and long-term effects in a plausible way?
— Lyman Stone \u77f3\u4f86\u6c11 (@lymanstoneky) December 4, 2020
So a few days back I was tweeting about SSRIs. The big question with these drugs is: why do controlled trials routinely show such small effects when practitioners and patients report life-changingly-large effects?
1. The condition tends to improve on its own in a majority of cases
2. Placebo effects for the condition are unusually large
Which means the large crude effects of SSRIs get swamped.
1. (Not my focus here) Are we treating these conditions appropriately given their untreated prognosis is usually (though certainly not always!!) "goes away in a few months"?
2. Why are placebo effects so unusually large?
But the second one is really interesting. Placebo effects exist for virtually all conditions, of course. But for psychological health they tend to be very big.
I think this is wrong.
1) it's super impressive we get even the effects we do
2) a lot of what people need is to feel like they're getting attention from the gods
SSRIs actually have an average effect BETTER than placebos. Suggesting they work even on nonbelievers to some extent!
More from Lyman Stone 石來民
Ulysses S. Grant would like a WORD
Or Teddy Roosevelt. Or Dwight Eisenhower. Or Andrew Jackson. Or Abraham Lincoln. Or George Washington. Or Zachary Taylor. Or any of numerous presidents who were honest-to-goodness battle-hardened warriors.
James Monroe fought the Hessians at Trenton and nearly died of wounds sustained there, then wintered in Valley Forge, then fought until Monmouth, then repeatedly tried to raise new regiments for the war until he went bankrupt doing it.
James Monroe, of the Era of Good Feelings, longest serving president of all time.... was in the boats crossing the icy Delaware.
Andrew Jackson was in a duel. He was shot in the chest right by his heart.
But he didn't go down. He stood there and, while bleeding out, steadily took aim and killed the dude who shot him.
Stone cold.
Hogan Gidley: Trump is "the most masculine person to ever hold the White House as the president of the United States" https://t.co/fcoYWyaEhz
— Eliza Relman (@eliza_relman) January 11, 2021
Or Teddy Roosevelt. Or Dwight Eisenhower. Or Andrew Jackson. Or Abraham Lincoln. Or George Washington. Or Zachary Taylor. Or any of numerous presidents who were honest-to-goodness battle-hardened warriors.
James Monroe fought the Hessians at Trenton and nearly died of wounds sustained there, then wintered in Valley Forge, then fought until Monmouth, then repeatedly tried to raise new regiments for the war until he went bankrupt doing it.
James Monroe, of the Era of Good Feelings, longest serving president of all time.... was in the boats crossing the icy Delaware.
Andrew Jackson was in a duel. He was shot in the chest right by his heart.
But he didn't go down. He stood there and, while bleeding out, steadily took aim and killed the dude who shot him.
Stone cold.
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Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.
See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:
And see this thing that I wrote:
And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:
And see this other thing that I wrote:
One thing I've been noticing about responses to today's column is that many people still don't get how strong the forces behind regional divergence are, and how hard to reverse 1/ https://t.co/Ft2aH1NcQt
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 20, 2018
See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:
And see this thing that I wrote:
And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:
And see this other thing that I wrote: