Word comes that unpublished studies of antidepressants show the drugs are overrated ("Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy," Personal Journal, Jan. 17). This isn't a surprise to many of us who have prescribed them. Sadly, the $21 billion antidepressant industry is built more on marketing hype than medical science.

The medicalization of depression dates to a "chemical imbalance" theory of the late 1950s, when some patients taking the anti-hypertensive drug reserpine got depressed. Reserpine was known to partially deplete...