Commonly prescribed anti-depressants appear to be doing patients more harm than good, say researchers who have published a paper examining the impact of the medications on the entire body.
“It’s important because millions of people are prescribed anti-depressants each year, and the conventional wisdom about these drugs is that they’re safe and effective.”
“We need to be much more cautious about the widespread use of these drugs,” says Paul Andrews, an evolutionary biologist at McMaster University and lead author of the article, published today in the online journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Andrews and his colleagues examined previous patient studies into the effects of anti-depressants and determined that the benefits of most anti-depressants, even taken at their best, compare poorly to the risks, which include premature death in elderly patients.
Anti-depressants are designed to relieve the symptoms of depression by increasing the levels of serotonin in the brain, where it regulates mood. The vast majority of serotonin that the body produces, though, is used for other purposes, including digestion, forming blood clots at wound sites, reproduction and development.
What the researchers found is that anti-depressants have negative health effects on all processes normally regulated by serotonin.
The findings include these elevated risks:
developmental problems in infants
problems with sexual stimulation and function and sperm development in adults
digestive problems such as diarrhea, constipation, indigestion and bloating
Study offers more proof for the power of placebo, say UCLA researchers
Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) often undergo multiple courses of antidepressant treatment during their lives. This is because the disorder can recur despite treatment and because finding the right medication for a specific individual can take time.
While the relationship between prior treatment and the brain’s response to subsequent treatment is unknown, a new study by UCLA researchers suggests that how the brain responds to antidepressant medication may be influenced by its remembering of past antidepressant exposure.
Interestingly, the researchers used a harmless placebo as the key to tracking the footprints of prior antidepressant use.
Aimee Hunter, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and colleagues showed that a simple placebo pill, made to look like actual medication for depression, can “trick” the brain into responding in the same manner as the actual medication.
The report was published online March 23 in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology.
The investigators examined changes in brain function in 89 depressed persons during eight weeks of treatment, using either an antidepressant medication or a similar-looking placebo pill. They set out to compare the two treatments — medication versus placebo — but they also added a twist: They separately examined the data for subjects who had never previously taken an antidepressant and those who had. [continue reading…]
In the current issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, a group of German investigators presents new data on role of treatment preferences in the outcome of depression.
This study demonstrates that patients’ relative preference for medication versus psychotherapy should be considered when offering a treatment to depressed patients because receiving the preferred treatment conveys an additional and clinically relevant benefit in outcome.
Little is known about the influence of depressed patients’ preferences and expectations about treatments upon treatment outcome. In this study the researchers investigated whether better clinical outcome in depressed primary care patients is associated with receiving their preferred treatment. [continue reading…]
In a study published in the last 2010 issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, a group of researchers of the University of Amsterdam presents new findings on the relationship between weight and recurrent depression. [continue reading…]
