I'm not sure who said talk therapy was ineffective -- I've certainly never claimed that. I take a rather dim view of Freudian psychotherapy, but I doubt that is even a significant fraction of all the talk therapy that goes on anymore.
My experience with anti-depressants is, I think, rather interesting. I've never taken tricyclics or SSRI's, but I have and still do take Wellbutrin. But I started taking it as a aid to quitting smoking, not for depression. (For those who don't know, Wellbutrin is known to decrease the craving for nicotine, presumably by completively binding with the same receptors that nicotine does, although the mechanism isn't known for certain.)
I was not seeking relief from depression and did not believe I was depressed. After taking it for a couple of weeks, not only was it very, very easy to forgo most of my normal quota of cigarettes, but I felt brighter, lighter, more upbeat -- in short, less depressed. I found when the exogenous things that tended to put me into a serious funk, now were much more easily tolerable and they didn't seem so insoluble anymore.
I had a falling out with my then physician w/in about a year and without a dr to renew the script I quit taking the drug. That was a couple of years ago. Last year the waves of depression and despair starting really becoming debilitating again and I went to my new doc and told him my past experience and asked him to write me a new script. That was about six mos ago and I will never voluntarily stop taking it again. (I think my wife would kick me out if I did stop taking it!).
SO I have nothing too say personally about SSRI's (Zoloft, Prozac and friends), but I didn't realize I was depressed (kelley did though!) until I got undepressed by taking Welbutrin for another purpose. Nothing could be further from a placebo effect since I wasn't expecting any effect at all!
$0.02,
-j
--
"Calling religion a drug is an insult to drugs everywhere. Religion is more like the placebo of the masses."
-- MeFi user boaz