The conclusions come from the largest ever high-quality study that was not funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
The side-effects of the herbal antidepressant include anxiety, panic attacks and vomiting.
The myth was created by drug companies to sell serotonin reuptake inhibiting (SSRI) drugs.
Could this side-effect be beneficial?
Many doctors are misleading patients about antidepressant withdrawal symptoms.
Paradigm shift in the treatment of serious depression and bipolar disorder.
Millions are prescribed antidepressants each year, but what are they doing to the body?
Millions are prescribed antidepressants each year, but what are they doing to the body?
Antidepressants may do more harm than good, according to a review looking at the drug’s impact on the whole body.
While the drugs may be effective at alleviating depression, they have considerable side-effects.
The researchers found three studies that suggest people taking antidepressants die at a higher rate.
One study has even suggested antidepressants may increase the risk of death by 33%.
Dr Paul Andrews, the study’s first author, said:
“We need to be much more cautious about the widespread use of these drugs.
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.”
The study found that the side-effects of antidepressants include:
Many of these processes are regulated by serotonin.
Dr Andrews said:
“Serotonin is an ancient chemical. It’s intimately regulating many different processes, and when you interfere with these things you can expect, from an evolutionary perspective, that it’s going to cause some harm.
The thing that’s been missing in the debates about anti-depressants is an overall assessment of all these negative effects relative to their potential beneficial effects.
Most of this evidence has been out there for years and nobody has been looking at this basic issue.”
Previous studies by Dr Andrews and colleagues have found relatively minimal benefits of antidepressants.
They have also found people were more likely to relapse after taking the drug.
Dr Andrews said:
“It could change the way we think about such major pharmaceutical drugs.
You’ve got a minimal benefit, a laundry list of negative effects — some small, some rare and some not so rare.
The issue is: does the list of negative effects outweigh the minimal benefit?”
The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (Andrews et al., 2012).
New blood tests could take the guessing out of antidepressant prescriptions.
New blood tests could take the guessing out of antidepressant prescriptions.
Up until now doctors have essentially been guessing which antidepressant medication might work for patients.
But now researchers have identified a blood test that could help.
Dr Madhukar Trivedi, who led the research, said:
“Currently, our selection of depression medications is not any more superior than flipping a coin, and yet that is what we do.
Now we have a biological explanation to guide treatment of depression.”
The blood test measures the levels of C-reactive protein (CRP).
They tested the connection between CRP and two antidepressants called escitalopram (Cipralex, Lexapro etc.) and bupropion (Wellbutrin, Elontril, Zyban etc.).
They found that CRP levels could help predict which combination would work.
Dr Trivedi thinks the same approach could be used with other antidepressants.
CRP is a measure of inflammation in the body, which studies suggest is linked to depression.
CRP levels are not the only biological markers that might provide clues as to which antidepressant will work.
Dr Trivedi said:
“Both patients and primary-care providers are very desperately looking for markers that would indicate there is some biology involved in this disease.
Otherwise, we are talking about deciding treatments from question-and-answer from the patients, and that is not sufficient.”
Currently, around one-third of patients do not improve after taking the first medication they are prescribed.
Fully 40% of people given antidepressants stop taking them within three months.
Dr Trivedi said:
“This outcome happens because they give up.
Giving up hope is really a central symptom of the disease.
However, if treatment selection is tied to a blood test and improves outcomes, patients are more likely to continue the treatment and achieve the benefit.”
The study was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology (Jha et al., 2017).
Antidepressants can help to fight a little-known symptom of depression.
Antidepressants can help to fight a little-known symptom of depression.
Antidepressants increase the feeling of being in control among people who are depressed, new research finds.
This may help because depressed people often report feeling helpless and having little control.
[See also: Antidepressants: 10 Shocking Studies Everyone Should Know]Generally feeling in control has a protective effect on mental health.
Feeling in control of one’s emotions, thoughts and the environment is usually beneficial.
Control is also linked to taking action — something which people who are depressed often avoid as there is a tendency to feel helpless.
In the research a group of people were given a modern type of SSRI antidepressant for seven days.
Some of the participants were depressed, others were not.
After a week, everyone did a computer test to look at people’s sense of being in control.
The results showed that when depressed people were given an antidepressant, it increased their sense of being in control.
Depressed people interacted more with the game in comparison to those given a placebo.
They felt the environment was controlling them less and they could take action.
The results could help to explain why antidepressants take so long to work and only work for some individuals.
Professor Robin Murphy, who led the study, said:
“Other research from members of our group has emphasized the effects these drugs have on processing of emotions, here we focussed on our sense of agency, on how we learn to be ‘in control’.
In addition to the direct chemical effect, the drug seems to contribute to learning to be in control, less constrained by the environment, and perhaps this might be a link to how these drugs contribute to the alleviation of depression.”
The study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (Msetfi et al., 2016).
Do antidepressants work for young people?
Do antidepressants work for young people?
Most antidepressants do not work for children and young people, new research finds.
In fact some of the drugs may do more harm than good.
This is set against the fact that increasing numbers of children and adolescents are being prescribed the drugs.
In the United States, for example, between 2005 and 2012, the percentage of those under 20-years-old taking antidepressants rose from 1.3% to 1.6%.
For the research, scientists reviewed every study that tested the effects of antidepressants on children and adolescents.
Each was rated on the basis of how acceptable they were, whether they worked and continued to be taken and what the associated risks were.
Only fluoxetine — also known as Prozac, Animex-On, Sarafem, Adofen and Deprex — emerged as having more benefits than risks.
One drug — venlafaxine (known as Effexor) — was found to increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts.
The study’s authors write:
“Consequently, the question of whether to use antidepressant drugs for the treatment of major depressive disorder in young people and, if so, which antidepressant would be preferred, remains controversial.”
Professor Peng Xie, one of the study’s co-authors, said:
“The balance of risks and benefits of antidepressants for the treatment of major depression does not seem to offer a clear advantage in children and teenagers, with probably only the exception of fluoxetine.
We recommend that children and adolescents taking antidepressants should be monitored closely, regardless of the antidepressant chosen, particularly at the beginning of treatment.”
Some of the adverse effects of antidepressants may turn out to have been hidden, some researchers think.
Even fluoxetene (Prozac) may be worse than nothing, according to Dr Jon Jureidini, writing in a linked editorial:
“The effect of misreporting is that antidepressants, possibly including fluoxetine, are likely to be more dangerous and less effective treatments than has been previously recognised, so there is little reason to think that any antidepressant is better than nothing for young people.”
The study was published in The Lancet (Cipriani et al., 2016).
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