You're joking - but that's actually an EXTREMELY interesting question.
Would humans on Reboxetine do better on a forced swim test? Because if they do, but they are still depressed then that's clear evidence that the forced swim test is worthless.
On the other hand if it has no effect, then humans are different from animals and don't react the same way to drugs, but the test may still be good.
Because if they do, but they are still depressed then that's clear evidence that the forced swim test is worthless.
Worthless for measuring antidepressants, maybe. But I'm sure you could find sponsors for a drug that causes someone to irrationally keep fighting, even if it has no effect on mood.
Forced-swim test was originally developed as an animal model for learned helplessness. So perhaps a subclass of humans whose depression arises from learned helplessness could benefit from reboxetine.
The real problem here is that the field of psychiatry is bandying about diagnoses like "depression" as if they actually mean something, when actually they reflect behavioral traits which could arise from a variety of etiologies.
Perhaps not a forced swim test, but having a human swim in place (or tread water) for as long as they can. In a swimming pool, with people around to rescue them if they stop swimming and start drowning, and being removed as soon as they give up by ... I don't know, going over and grabbing the edge of the pool? Or making some unambiguous hand gesture, or yelling a safe word, or whatever. I'm not entirely sure how valid the results from this would be, but there's also controversy over forced swim tests with rats and mice, so it would probably be just as accurate.
The test doesn't measure swimming, but rather how long before they give up.
So you could make a rigged test. For example:
Tell people you will pay them $200 if they can find the exit of a maze (either real or on the computer). But the maze is rigged, and has no exit. Then time how long it takes before they give up.
