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

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.

Comments

The drug industry chasing $$...

[bogaboga]

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.

Is it just me? I find the whole idea of a pill curing depression rather strange. I think what we need is a more just society; a society that focuses less on material possessions or money but more on family -
  whatever that may mean to an individual.

Let's remember that there are communities on this planet where depression is an unknown, especially the so called third world nations, despite their popluation's daily struggle to survive.

Re:The drug industry chasing $$...

[geekmux]

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.

Believing the pill-pushing healers is also difficult to swallow due to the one constant that stands out; Greed.

Greed has infected the Pharma industry, and it wouldn't matter if the pill was as worthless as a placebo; if it generates revenue and comes with the benefit of being able to generate more revenue due to side effects, it's considered a good thing and the answer in our corrupt world of ruthless capitalism.

With regards to what a just society is capable of generating, Big Pharma is now the largest opium dealer on the planet, with Greed killing tens of thousands of people every year.

Not the study I was looking for

[Kiuas]

The tittle had me excited because I thought they'd been studying the suicide risk of depressed people on anti-depressants vs. depressed people not on anti-depressants. There have been studies done, such as this one (open access, published in the journal of the Royal Society of Medicine) found that when selective serotonin and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors are given to adult healthy volunteers with no signs of a mental disorder, the suicide risk is doubled. Whether this doubling also occurs in depressed individuals is the real question, but this is hard to study ethically.

Anti-depressants are far more controversial than most people seem to think, and the medical field has slowly begun to admit it. Note that I'm not saying the study I mentioned or this study prove that their usage should be stopped, but at the very least they're clear indicators that more research is needed into their efficacy and potential alternatives.

Re:Not the study I was looking for

[hey!]

You should never make any health decisions based on individual studies, and most importantly never, ever go looking for studies which support a decision you are going to make, because you'll find them.

I like to say that science isn't about truth, it's about evidence. The difference is there is logically no such thing as conflicting truths, although two different truths may make you feel conflicted. Evidence, on the other hand, contradicts other evidence all the time. It's the normal state of things.

What you want to do is base decisions on systematic review papers published in high impact journals. The purpose of a systematic review is to review the state of evidence at the current point in time. You may disagree with the author's conclusions, but the evidence should be laid out right there.

Control group?

[Tony Isaac]

The article doesn't mention a control group.

Clinical depression is an illness, and like other illnesses, it can cause a lot of physical problems. Could it be that the illness itself is causing the organ malfunctions, rather than the antidepressants?

Depression also leads to many bad habits, such as substance abuse and other addictions. Could it be that these bad habits are the real cause of the organ failures?

Antidepressants do have some nasty side effects. We've known that for decades. But this study doesn't prove it. And even if it's right, the risk of death and poor quality of life due to depression is far worse than anything caused by these side effects.

Re:Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Antidepressants benefit the pharma-medical-industrial complex orders of magnitude more than they do anyone they're prescribed for. They're just another Band-aid put on a problem rather than actually solving it. At best they're good for short-term use -- but taking 5HTP, which you can buy over-the-counter for cheap at healthfood stores, will work just as well in the short term.

The real cure for depression is cognitive therapy, which I otherwise call 'learning to deal with your own shit effectively'. It teaches you a life skill, and it's a 'cure' because once you learn How To Deal WIth Your Own Shit Effectively, you don't need any medication, and at worst you might need to talk to someone once in a while when things get bad. That's the upside for the individual. The downside for the pharma-medical-industrial complex, is they don't keep getting paid forever, while people suffer the side effects of shitty 'medication' that fries their brains, and Cognitive Therapy is expensive for them. Tough shit for them, I say.

..oh, and before anyone calls me out for 'not understanding' or 'never having had the problem'? BULLSHIT. At one point in my life I was suicidal, and fell for the Prozac meme. Shit turned me into a goddamned zombie. People I've known longer than when that happened get a weird and frightened look in their eyes when I bring that time up because they say I didn't even sound or act like a human being anymore. Never. Ever. Again.

At the absolute most, pharmaceutical antidepressants should only be used for the most severe, hard-core, extreme, otherwise intractable cases of clinical depression -- NOT FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST NOT 'HAPPY HAPPY ALL THE TIME' AND CAN'T HANDLE SOME RANDOM SHIT IN THEIR LIVES. Again: cognitive therapy is The Way. Learn to deal with your own shit, and learn that life is not Happy Happy Happy All The Goddamned Time.

Posted as AC even though I'm logged in because I know damned well I'm going to get modded down to neg one and deluged with angry and hateful comments. People don't like the truth, after all.