Reference no: EM134003968
Assignment: SSRI Trials and Depression
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are one of the most common types of medications used to treat depression. This assignment is designed to get you to explore some of the research on how effective they are and do some critical thinking on what makes a good/poor clinical trial to test how effective a medication is. Get the instant assignment help.
Step I: Find two articles that were designed to test the effectiveness of an SSRI (or SSRIs) to treat depression. One should be better designed than the other.
Step II: For your write up (roughly 8 double-spaced pages) you should:
A. Provide a brief introduction to what SSRIs are.
B. Summarize both of your chosen studies, paying special attention to their methodologies.
C. Compare and contrast their methodologies. Think of things like: How did they recruit their samples? What were their comparison groups? Did they include a placebo? Was it a single or double blind experiment? What was the length of the study? What measures did they use to look at effectiveness and other outcomes?
D. How do you feel each of the studies did in addressing the "six controversial aspects of clinical trials" from the textbook? Which one did it better and why?
E. Which study do you feel had a better design and why? The more detail and critical thought you put into this section of your assignment, the better. You can also bring up aspects of how both studies could have done better. To be clear, "better" means better at providing evidence of the effectiveness of SSRIs.