> I am much more interested in giving people here good information that making you feel accepted.

please repeat the 'good information' that you have offered on this thread because i seem to have missed it.

you (and drunksunflower) are of course correct that a number of factors play in to doctors medication decisions.

i am prepared to defend the thesis that the most influential factor *should* be the randomised control double blind studies that have been published in the leading journals. why? because those trials are more likely to provide generalisable information than other factors like advertising and the like.

my concern, however, is the quality of the interpretations that have been published in the leading journals.

> I work with doctors every day and have for over 10 years, I teach them in residency training, I consult for them regarding meds, so YES I know what they do to make a medication decision.

well i have shopped in supermarkets several times a week for over 13 years. i see many others shoppers and we often discuss our product choices so (by analogy) YES i know what they do to make a product choice.

the point here is that psychological research has shown that shoppers are actually very bad at knowing what factors actually are influencing their product choice. as such, while i might well think that i know and think that my many years of experience makes me an authority on how people make their product choices i am simply mistaken.

as such, i do believe that it would be wise to at least be open to the possibility that doctors medication decisions are not fully transparent to you and of course to them. i mean really, given the psychological research on decision making it would be more surprising if doctors treatment decisions were fully transparent to them and their supervisors.

> By the way I have ample research training, and yes we are trained to tear down research to learn how to examine it, but one moves beyond that exercise in futility when as a practicing doctor you have 15-30 minutes to make a very important decision about someone's life.

yeah. so... a patient presents and requests an SSRI. the patient has seen the ads. the patient has heard that a few of their friends are on SSRI's and they believe that an SSRI might well be that magic bullet to cure their depression.

and the treatment decision is...

based on the APA reccomendation that patients take their anti-d's and stay on them? based on the research (that was behind the APA reccomendation) for the efficacy of SSRI's?

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what is getting to me is the reccomendation that people take and stay on SSRI's GIVEN the way the studies are being reinterpreted now.

would you prescribe SSRI's to children?
how about adolescents?

how about adults?

what reinterpretation of the findings would lead to your changing your decision about prescribing them to adults?

if the APA changed its policy decision?