And what the trial found is that the drugs worked. Some 67 percent of patients did feel better, just like I did in those first months. But then they found something else. Within a year, half of the patients were fully depressed again. Only one in three of the people who stayed on the pills28 had a lasting, proper recovery from their depression. (And even that exaggerates the effect—since we know many of those people would have recovered naturally without the pills.)
