title: Miracle drug, poison, or placebo: patients' experiences with antidepressant medications as described in postings on an online message board.
abstract: Messages posted on the MSN Health message board in response to a news story reporting that antidepressant medications are placebos were examined. Over 37 days, 1,624 messages were posted by 1,238 unique authors. The sampling unit consisted of 960 authors who were users. Users' messages were gathered in real time and content analyzed. Few users explicitly responded to the question posed in the article: 2.5% of the users stated their antidepressant was a miracle drug, 2.0% stated it was a poison, and only 0.2% stated it was a placebo. Users reported positive experiences with antidepressants more than twice as often as they reported negative experiences.
authors: Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. michael.montagne@mcphs.edu
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Montagne