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Researchers Find Antidepressants Increase Risk of Death (medicalxpress.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the heads-up dept.

Artem Tashkinov shares a report from Medical Xpress: Antidepressant medications, most commonly prescribed to reduce depression and anxiety, increase the risk of death, according to new findings by a McMaster-led team of researchers. It's widely known that brain serotonin affects mood, and that most commonly used antidepressant treatment for depression blocks the absorption of serotonin by neurons. It is less widely known, though, that all the major organs of the body -- the heart, kidneys, lungs, liver -- use serotonin from the bloodstream. Antidepressants block the absorption of serotonin in these organs as well, and the researchers warn that antidepressants could increase the risk of death by preventing multiple organs from functioning properly.

Interestingly, the news about antidepressants is not all bad. The researchers found that antidepressants are not harmful for people with cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. This makes sense since these antidepressants have blood-thinning effects that are useful in treating such disorders. Unfortunately, this also means that for most people who are in otherwise good cardiovascular health, antidepressants tend to be harmful. The study has been published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

5 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Sure by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That may well be and it's good to know this, however it makes little sense lowering your risk of death due to serotonin absorption blockers when you in turn either run a risk of throwing yourself off the next bridge or don't have any fun living anyway.

    1. Re: Sure by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If they cause depression to lessen then they do work as anti-depressants

    2. Re:Sure by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is that those antidepressants may well make you throw yourself off a bridge.

      The key problem with antidepressants is that they usually increase your drive and enable you to "act" before they improve your mood. Now ponder: What happens when you give a deeply depressed, suicidal person whose main reason to NOT kill himself is that he didn't even have the drive to do this a motivational boost?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re: Sure by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've tried exercise, yoga, meditation, changing my diet, quitting drinking, CBT and many self-help books. The only thing that alleviates my symptoms effectively is drug therapy. I wouldn't take them if something else worked.

  2. Re:The drug industry chasing $$... by gtall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So in your opinion, brain chemistry has nothing to do with mental stability. And if you'd bother to read the literature, anti-depressants do not "cure" depression. The stabilize a person so they aren't functionally incapacitated....when they work. That's the other problem, everybody's body chemistry is different, what works on one does not work on another. And what works this year might not work next year on the same person. People are moving targets due to aging, and their diets also vary from year to year.

    Depression is not a single condition. Pick up the Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, there are myriad disorders, i.e., paranoia, grandiosity, etc. One person usually does not have a single one but is some smorgasbord of different conditions. That makes picking drugs that much harder.

    So go ahead believing a just society will cure depression. Just societies also generate serial killers.