Flawed reviews of pediatric depression studies underestimate medication effects.

Previous reviews of antidepressant treatment for children and adolescents that found minimal or no positive effects failed to account for critical methodological differences in studies, a new review concludes. The author of the review, published March 3 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, states that earlier reviews have drawn questionable conclusions because they categorized many flawed pharmaceutical industry-sponsored trials that found no benefits from antidepressants as negative trials, rather than as failed trials. Accounting for this distinction leads the author of the present paper to conclude that evidence for beneficial effects of antidepressants in children and adolescents is actually strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]