David Healy: Do randomized clinical trials add or subtract from clinical knowledge

Jay D. Amsterdam’s comment on the Healy-Beasley exchange

        If you have not yet read this INHN commentary by David Healy (on the recent INHN postings by Charles Beasley), it’s most definitely worth a read! It’s a no-holds-barred, total – bark-on – view of how Big Pharma may, or may not, have corrupted the production and interpretation of RCT results and the debasing of the quality of psychiatry’s “evidence-based” findings of antidepressant therapy (such as it is, presently)!

        I have great respect for both scholars (i.e., Charles Beasley and David Healy); and see this exchange as a seminal scholarly and public (if not somewhat emotional) debate for our field. It defines two very different, erudite and well thought out views on what is perhaps one of the seminal crises of our field: i.e., are antidepressants “really” efficacious and safe to prescribe for depression (and many other psychiatric disorders, as well)?

October 7, 2021