While not solely for depression, this widely prescribed medicine is quite illustrative for the whole psycho-pharma drug trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AripiprazoleMinimal, short term trials, no idea what it does on the long term, terrible side effects, and billions per year profit.
To put it in your words, for a great part, baseless nonsense. I mean... longest trial... 26 weeks... For medication that's intended to be prescribed lifelong? Really? U wut m8s?
My mom is on this one since 4 years for her bipolar disorder, because of budget cuts in psychiatric care system, and it has utterly destroyed her. Her diabetes has dramatically worsened, she has to take stomach protectors, her liver is damaged, she stumbles and falls over things because she doesn't care to look where she
steps shuffles, she can't ride a bike anymore, takes 4h to make a simple shopping list, and just sits behind her pc and plays magic marbles 10+h per day. But her welfare manager, shrink, and last but not least, the health insurance company are happy, because she doesn't call crisis services anymore, and needs less expensive attention from healthcare professionals when stress triggers hypomania or depression. Still, I can clearly see the hypomania rise even under the medication, it just doesn't manifest on the surface anymore. The meds don't treat at all, they just surpress symptoms. At an immense cost. She used to be manic once every decade or so, and need institutionalizing for a couple of months (granted, sometimes with medication, but only temporarily), and then have a normal, or well, normal enough life for 10 years until it surfaced again. With the meds, she's just a zombie for the rest of her days, and has more hypomanic episodes under the surface, they just don't bother anyone or cost more taxpayer money anymore.
Fuck medicalization of psychological afflictions. Of which the vast majority are stress-triggered.