WARNING: If you cannot be objective about your medication, please do NOT read this page. I have often been accused of being "anti-medication." Anyone with an NLP background will know that I am pro- whatever works best in the long-run. Many people have benefitted from taking medication. What I am trying to do is address the pseudo-science perpetuated by the drug companies and bought into by most of our mental health professionals.
At least 75% of the effectiveness of SSRIs is placebo (ie the sufferer really wants to get better and is capable of doing so but their belief system prevents them). This important study also shows evidence that medications not classed as anti-depressants often work as well as Prozac.
Other studies show that an active placebo (one you can feel the effect of) works better than a sugar pill. Therefore, a rough estimate is that 80-85% of the effectiveness of most psychiatric drugs is purely the placebo effect.
What does this mean? It's a bit like saying 6 out of 7 people who report an SSRI helping them, actually helped themselves. The chemical itself made no difference.
Furthermore, problems are tied to certain states of mind. If you alter your state of mind via drugs, then some of the mental functions that are fundamental to the problem may become inhibited.
People who drink to (temporarily) deal with their problems know this. However, being drunk is not a good state of mind from which to resolve the problems that they might have when they're sober or drunk
SSRIs may alter your state of mind enough to make those habitual negative thought patterns much more difficult to do! Plus, at a reasonable dosage, they leave enough of your mental function to be able to change habitual thought patterns, make good decisions for the future etc.
Since being depressed makes being optimistic more difficult and since most anxiety is anticipatory, any placebo effect would be multiplied further: "I expect to feel less anxiety/depressed because I'm on this drug."
The Family Therapy Networker - Exposing the MythMakers
Latest research:
Brain scans reveal placebo effect in depressed patients
Summary of recent placebo studies
"Sugar pills have done as well as -- or better than -- antidepressants" - Washington Post
Now, if only someone would research what makes some people respond to placebo when others don't...
Dr Breggin - the most famous critic of modern psychiatry
How Drug Company Money Has Corrupted Psychiatry - Loren R. Mosher, M.D