The real truth isn't found within the published paper but rather within a busy table on page 142 of the online appendix. It is here where the authors report what we want: the actual difference between drugs and placebo, before and after treatment, on the depression rating scales. Here we see that the Cohen's d standardized mean difference effect sizes range from a low of 0.19 to a high of 0.62 with amitriptyline. Thus, amitriptyline exceeds the clinically meaningful threshold of 0.50, with a traditional meta-analytic method. No other drug does so, with the closest second place being fluvoxamine, with a Cohen's d value of 0.44. Looking at all of the agents, 10 drugs have Cohen's d values less than 0.30, which is very small and clinically meaningless, whereas four have effect sizes from 0.30 to 0.34. Thus, 74% (14/19) of antidepressants clearly have little or no clinically important benefit in this analysis (for some reason, no data are provided in this table with two of the drugs). Four drugs have effect sizes of 0.37-0.44, and as noted, one agent exceeds the 0.50 threshold (amitriptyline). Perhaps a clearer conclusion than anything else is the well-proven fact that the tricyclic antidepressants are more effective than newer agents (there were no monoamine oxidase inhibitors in this meta-analysis). - www.medscape.com