According to a recent study conducted by researchers in the US, Canada, and the UK from the Public Library of Science, and according to documentation won by investigators who sued under freedom of information, antidepressant drugs don’t work.

Much of the information that was obtained through the investigation and in the resent study was already known by US drug regulators – by law, drug companies must deliver all studies, even those that show its product as ineffectual, to regulators before the drug is approved for public consumption.

While these recent findings have sent shock waves through lobbying firms and made sheepish the clinically depressed public, pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, have denied they withheld studies showing that their products had no more of an effect than dummy pills.

There has been little coverage of this news in American media.

A large percentage of the public, including myself, can now wonder: Has it been an illusion, a farce? Should I have been better off shoving sugar pills down my throat and thinking happy thoughts?

Where was this information as millions of Americans lined up to have their scripts filled?

According to Tim Kendall, the deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ research unit in the UK, as quoted in the Independent, pharmaceutical companies have held tight to this information on both sides of the pond, as antidepressants are among the most successful commercial ventures to date.

“The companies have this data but they will not release it. When we were drawing up the guidelines on prescribing antidepressants to children [in 2004] we wrote to all the companies asking for it but they said no. The Government pledged in its manifesto to compel the drug companies to give access to their data but that commitment has not been met.”

Those studies submitted to US regulators showed that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI’s) were only effective in a very small group of extremely depressed patients. So what about those people who’ve only got a bad case of the blues? Exercise, I guess.

It just amazes me the amount of money spent in an industry that has turned out to be a bust.

We’ve all seen the commercials, an idyllic scene in which two people are skipping through a field of poppies, while a man with baritone voice quickly raps off slew of horrifying side-effects as we’re imagining a world that doesn’t so closely resemble hell.

I’ve been duped. And 40 million others have been, too. So what recourse is there but to admit to ourselves that life is what you make it – said the late Andy Wood – and if you make it death, well… rest your soul.