Quotes by Irving Kirsch

About Irving Kirsch:

Irving Kirsch is Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and a lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is also professor emeritus of psychology at the Universities of Hull and Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and the University of Connecticut in the United States. Kirsch is noted for his research on placebo effects, antidepressants, expectancy, and hypnosis. He is the originator of response expectancy theory, and his analyses of clinical trials of antidepressants have influenced official treatment guidelines in the United Kingdom. He is the author of the 2009 book, The Emperor's New Drugs.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how sm...

Irving Kirsch

Not only are poor, unemployed, less will-educated and non-white people more likely to become depressed, but they are also least likely to benefit from treatment by either antidepressants or psychotherapy. That is why combating depression requires mor...

Irving Kirsch

Depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is not cured by medication. Depression may not even be an illness at all. Often, it can be a normal reaction to abnormal situations. Poverty, unemployment, and the loss of loved on...

Irving Kirsch

Depression is a serious problem, but drugs are not the answer. In the long run, psychotherapy is both cheaper and more effective, even for very serious levels of depression. Physical exercise and self-help books based on CBT can also be useful, eithe...

Irving Kirsch

The results of decades of neurotransmitter-depletion studies point to one inescapable conclusion: low levels or serotonin, norepinephrine or dopamine do not cause depression. here is how the authors of the most complete meta-analysis of serotonin-dep...

Irving Kirsch

Many of the benefits of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) can be obtained without going into therapy. There are a number of self-help books, CDs and computer programs that have been used to treat depression and some of these have been tested in clin...

Irving Kirsch

Physicians do not systematically prescribe placebos to their patients. Hence they have no way of comparing the effects of the drugs they prescribe to placebos. When they prescribe a treatment and it works, their natural tendency is to attribute the c...

Irving Kirsch

When people recover from depression via psychotherapy, their attributions about recovery are likely to be different than those of people who have been treated with medication. Psychotherapy is a learning experience. Improvement is not produced by an ...

Irving Kirsch

Perhaps anti-depressants should be best reserved for the very extreme cases and, more importantly, for those who do not respond to alternative forms of interventions.

Irving Kirsch

There are a variety of techniques to help people change the kind of thinking that leads them to become depressed. These techniques are called cognitive behavioral therapy.

Irving Kirsch

Anything that instills a sense of hope will at least temporarily help treat depression.

Irving Kirsch

The big bulk of the response to antidepressants is the placebo response.

Irving Kirsch

Nocebos often cause a physical effect, but it's not a physically produced effect. What's the cause? In many cases, it's an unanswered question.

Irving Kirsch

To someone who is not currently on anti-depressants, I would suggest trying other treatments first - for example, psychotherapy.

Irving Kirsch

Antidepressants can have troubling side effects and are addictive for some people.

Irving Kirsch

Perhaps 10 percent of patients who are prescribed antidepressants are really benefiting from the drugs' active ingredients.

Irving Kirsch

There seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients.

Irving Kirsch

There seem to be many causes of depression. One cause is profound loss, grief. Economic hardship we know is linked to depression. We don't have a full picture.

Irving Kirsch

The one thing we do know is that the chemical imbalance theory - the theory that people get depressed when they don't have enough serotonin in their brain - we know that that's wrong.

Irving Kirsch

One problem I have with drug companies is that they don't make all their data public.

Irving Kirsch

Author Bio

NameIrving Kirsch
DescriptionMedical researcher
BornMarch 7, 1943