A $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! Perhaps this was the much awaited study by physicians, patients and the pharmaceutical industry. Depression afflicts 15 million Americans a year, according to government statistics. It is counted that last year that about 189 million prescriptions for antidepressants were written. Because of treatment costs, lost productivity, absenteeism and suicide, the disease costs the nation $83 billion annually.