They barely work better than placebo, from what I saw in my reading of the literature.
This is particularly underappreciated in the research done on these drugs, because a double-blind study isn't actually double-blind if many of the participants can easily tell whether they're in the placebo group due to very noticeable side effects.
It's been mentioned in other comments, but I really recommend the work of Irving Kirsch on this; he's a brilliant scientist and his book The Emperor's New Drugs is a real eye-opener.
There is a very good reason for it's use in up to 20% of the population in some groups in the US.
Just because we haven't pinpointed why doesn't matter a bit.
They work fantastically for some subset of people. For other people, they do nothing. For other people, they have negative side effects that make them not worth whatever benefits they provide. For some people, they cause extreme negative effects when the medication is removed. For some other people, they increase the chance that they will commit suicide.
It does matter that we haven’t pinpointed why they work for some people, because if we did, we might be able to avoid those negative effects and wasted time for the people for which they don’t work.
The real question is by what level is the effect is systematic, real, and measurable?
I'm open to alternatives but I'm convinced that antidepressants help people.
I'm not at all claiming it's a fun ride for everyone, just giving my one data point that it's not inevitably awful for absolutely everyone. Sorry you had to deal with it!
It doesn't matter if I have personal experience with this although I do. A very bad personal experience with the mental health service that was provided as well as the side effects I was talking about.
> I had to come off them and it wasn't a problem.
This just comes off as ignorant, there is established literature on the withdrawal effects. I was not speculating or spreading FUD. They are real, documented and more common than your anecdotal lucky experience
'I had no problem' means that bad problems aren't inevitable, which opposed the totally unqualified 'SEVERE' claim - they aren't always 'SEVERE'. That doesn't discount anyone's experiences when things do go bad as I acknowledged here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32169654 - I'm not dissing anyone's experiences.
It's not about you dissing anyone's experience, it is about you ignoring the reality of this issue just because you were lucky.
So what are we disagreeing on?
Whether or not it's ethical for a doctor to tell a depression patient that the depression is caused by a treatable vitamin deficiency is another matter. Then again, maybe it really is caused by a lack of micronutients. After all we really don't understand depression very well.