Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
That's... Depressing....
This makes me wonder about the medical qualifications of the article writers:
"The researchers reviewed studies involving hundreds of thousands of people and found that antidepressant users had a 33% higher chance of death than non-users."
So, users of antidepressants have a 133% chance of death?
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.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
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.
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.
Yes it is just you! Although it's true that unhappiness can be a byproduct of social ills it is profoundly ignorant of you to confuse this with clinical depression. The former might trigger an epsidoe of the latter but depression, anxiety, bipolar specturm disorders, schizophrenia and other mental disorders have a neurophysiological basis.
Also, please keep the tired trope about third world nations to yourself as there is no evedince whatsoever to support the conjecture. People in third world nations who suffer mental illness are generally shunned. Those that come to harm generally have their cause of death misattributed,
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
That's not to say that finding better families for foster care wouldn't help a lot of kids w/ mental problems. (especially if there's one neglected kid who starts taking it out on the other kids, resulting in all ending up with issues) ...
But my first thought about this was 'doesn't suicide rate go up for the holidays?' Those are the times we spend with family. Now, maybe it's because people can't afford presents for the kids after getting laid off and they see themselves as a failure (so it's related to the materialism).
But for others, it's just dealing with family. Is my mom/grandmom/whoever going to pester me about not having a (boy|girl)friend/not liking my (boy|girl)friend/not being married/not having kids/not having a job/not having a good enough job/not being straight/whatever else?
I'd hang out w/ one of my brothers more ... perhaps some cousins ... maybe see my dad more than once every 5 years or so ... but the rest of the family? I'll pass.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
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.
This study does not seem to account for the fact that people who would take antidepressants might be at higher risk than those that would not. Therefore, this increased risk of death might be in part because they are depressed, not just because of the medication. These kinds of studies must be taken with a large grain of salt. Or a spoonful of sugar. If we are going to publish study results on news outlets, let's please make sure they are thorough and aren't sensationalized!
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.
Also apparently slashdotters who have never been nor meet anyone who was depressed. Which is incredibly depressing. I didn't realize basic treatment of depression has reached global warming levels of denial outside of scientologists and conservative Christians.
About three years ago my wife started hearing voices. It got progressively worse until it was happening 22 hours a day or so. She went through all kinds of hell trying to get help and when she did they put her on a huge panoply of drugs. The drugs never helped. Some did make her into a zombie so she couldn't scream at the voices as much, but they didn't really help her. She'd struggled with depression, anxiety, and other less severe mental illness for about 15 years before the voices. She took SSRI's, Trycyclics, a few novel drugs, and if they ever did anything it was just a negative side effect. After dozens of doctors visits, 20 years of struggle, and trying just about ever treatment under the Sun, drugs have never worked. The only thing that ever showed any promise was when she was doing Cognitive Behavior Therapy. That actually had some incredibly good results, but the problem is that it's real work. For someone who can't concentrate, is clinically disorganized, and simply can't think without being interrupted by voices, CBT is too hard.
I haven't given up trying to help, but I have given up all hope that any of these doctors have clue about what they are doing. It doesn't help that you normally get super-short appointments with them (10 minutes is a long one). It also doesn't help that it's super-expensive.
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?
This reminds me of the sampling-error false link between antidepressants and criminal behavior, and the ethical dilemma some psychologists have when treating psychopaths.
Some psychopaths (just like some non-psychopaths) also happen to be clinically depressed. (It's apparently like being color-blind vs. being diabetic. No particular link, so there's all four binary combos.)
A depressed psychopath may be quite willing to commit atrocities but mostly doesn't because he's too downed to get up the energy to do it. (He may have committed a few already and be in prison, which might also add a bit of situational depression to the mix.)
So what do you get if you treat the depression? A fully-functional, energetic, psychopath, all set to go on the rampage he's been too downed-out to get around to.
Thus do you get sampling bias making it appear that a good antidepressant has increased criminal behavior as a side-effect. (Actually it just produces more active behavior in general - and the psychopahths do more of their usual thing.)
And thus the ethical dilemma for a shrink treating one: Does he leave the depression untreated and the patient suffering? Or does he treat the depression and produce an active, energetic psychopath who is a serious danger to everyone around him?
Psychopathy itself is essentially untreatable. About the only "treatment" that has been shown to be substantially effective (by the measure of drastically reducing recidivism) is to teach them Objectivism - a philosophy that provides convincing and accessible answers to "Why should I be good? What's in it for me?"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way