[kryogen1c]

> Unless you believe she is lying about doing much better after quitting her meds

This is an unscientific and inaccurate. The placebo and nocebo affects are real with actual health effects. Sometimes drugs don't make it to market because they have positive effects less effective than placebo.

[chillacy]

The new drugs coming to fda trials, Psilocybin and MDMA, have a huge non pharmacological component to them. The resulting experience and effect is vastly different when administered in a soft lit cushy room with relaxing settings vs a clinical lab. In that it’s only effective in the right “set and setting”. It almost looks like a strong placebo effect amplifier.

Both compounds work with the serotonin system in the brain. I’m wouldn’t be surprised if SSRIs had a similar caveat, where life circumstances and personal narrative are another factor in the effectiveness of the drugs.

Another lesson from these new drugs is that the results are delivered and pretty durable even long after the drugs leave the patient, which has interesting implications as to how it induces these changes (again not strictly pharmacological).

Which is all to say that science is still learning more, and I hope will bridge the huge gap between pharmacology and psychology.

[jm__87]

With depression, the measure is always subjective since you're trying to resolve a problem with someone's subjective experience. You can say this isn't useful since N=1, but I think it is safe to say we can take her word for the outcome - she has clearly tried many things and this has been her best outcome.

[darkerside]

Let's assume you are right and the positive effects were completely attributed to placebo effect. If placebo effect is an effective treatment that results in a cure, what exactly is your complaint?

[kryogen1c]

> If placebo effect is an effective treatment that results in a cure, what exactly is your complaint?

It's not reproducible because it's not medicine.

[darkerside]

Did you mean it's not medicine because it's not reproducible? I don't really understand the statement either way tbh.

Let's acknowledge that my question also assumed the most favorable scenario for your argument. Most objective observers would agree there is a nonzero chance that the treatment was not totally based on placebo effect, but rather on undiscovered science. You do understand that, right? That not all science has been discovered, there are many things we do not know or understand, and yet are true. If we cling to what has been proven and refute anything else, we freeze all progress. I can think of nothing less scientific.

[blurbleblurble]

Your idea of medicine is missing something important: the complex, messy, slippery, irrational, dynamic process called "healing."