You seem to labor under the fallacy to think that anti-depressants are some kind of lifestyle drugs that generally improve mood or tolerance of adversity. They don't.
I absolutely don’t see where I wrote that. I exactly know what anti-depressant are and are not. I’m currently taking them (though that’s for chronic anxiety).
So I absolutely know that they don’t improve mood or tolerance of adversity. They « just » flatten the emotional curve, I don’t see how having flat emotions (even the good ones) are some sort of enjoyable « lifestyle ». But it does allow me to work on my anxiety issues without being submerged by ridiculously amplified anxiety.
I couldn't find the original Psychologist who decided to use The Freedom of Information Act to procure All the studies concerning the efficy of Antidepressant drugs.
He collated the all the clinical studies, and not just the cherry picked ones.
What he found puckered a few Psychiatrists arses, but they still prescribe like it's the end of the world, and rake in a very comfortable income.
I can't remember the guy's name, but this study might suffice.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antidepressants-d...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/
Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect
Abstract
Antidepressants are supposed to work by fixing a chemical imbalance, specifically, a lack of serotonin in the brain. Indeed, their supposed effectiveness is the primary evidence for the chemical imbalance theory. But analyses of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits are due to the placebo effect. Some antidepressants increase serotonin levels, some decrease it, and some have no effect at all on serotonin. Nevertheless, they all show the same therapeutic benefit. Even the small statistical difference between antidepressants and placebos may be an enhanced placebo effect, due to the fact that most patients and doctors in clinical trials successfully break blind. The serotonin theory is as close as any theory in the history of science to having been proved wrong. Instead of curing depression, popular antidepressants may induce a biological vulnerability making people more likely to become depressed in the future.