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  3. Antidepressants fail to cure the symptoms of major depression in half of all

Antidepressants fail to cure the symptoms of major depression in half of all

游客2023-07-30  55
问题     Antidepressants fail to cure the symptoms of major depression in half of all patients with the disease even if they receive the best possible care, according to a definitive government study released yesterday.
    Significant numbers of patients continue to experience symptoms such as sadness, low energy and hopelessness after intensive treatment, even as about an equal number report an end to such problems--a result that quickly lent itself to interpretations that the glass was either half empty or half full.
    The $35 million taxpayer-funded study was the largest trial of its kind ever conducted. It provided what industry-sponsored trials have rarely captured: rather than merely ask whether patients are getting better, the study asked what patients most care about--whether depression can be made to disappear altogether.
    The study has been eagerly awaited by physicians, patients and the pharmaceutical industry. According to government statistics, depression afflicts 15 million Americans a year. About 189 million prescriptions for antidepressants were written last year, and the disease costs the nation $83 billion annually because of treatment costs, lost productivity, absenteeism and suicide.
    David Rubinow, a professor and the chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the results are an "illuminating and disconcerting" window into the affliction that is thought to fuel many of the 30,000 suicides committed each year in the United States.
    Although the study showed that patients who do not respond well to one drug could be helped by another, the results are "discouraging for several reasons," Rubinow said in an editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which also published the study. It is troubling that large numbers of patients continued to have problems, he said. Additionally, he noted that the drugs used in the study--Celexa, Wellbutrin, Zoloft and Effexor--work in very different ways yet had roughly equal effectiveness when it came to treating depression. This suggests that the underlying brain mechanisms of depression are far more complicated than simple notions of a single chemical imbalance.
    Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study, emphasized that patients should seek---and stick with--treatment. "The glass is half full from our perspective, "he said. But "the glass is half empty in that we need to come up with better treatments in the future." [br] According to Thomas Insel, "the glass is half empty" suggests that ______.
选项 A、patients should give up treatment
B、patients should stick to treatment
C、there is only half glass of water left
D、efforts should be made to find better treatment in the future
答案 D
解析 考生解答此题时需注意要依据文章解题，而不能根据个人了解的知识解题。按照一般常识性说法，人们对半杯水有两种态度：一种态度是积极的，认为杯子里还有半杯水，应感到庆幸，而另一种消极态度则认为杯子里只有半杯水，而感到沮丧、无望。对于半杯水问题的常识了解有助于考生理解文章，但本题是就文章观点设置考点，因此，考生应注意了解文章的阐释。文章最后一段指㈩Thomas Insel的看法：从积极的角度讲，我们有一半的把握治愈(the glass is half full)，因此，人们应该接受治疗；而从消极的角度讲，因为治疗只能解决一部分人的问题(the glass is half empty)，我们应该提供更好的治疗方案。故选D。
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