Antidepressants will not change your personality if used correctly. They will assist you in regaining your sense of self-identity and returning to your prior level of functioning. (Antidepressants do not improve a person's mood or functionality if they are not depressed; they are not a “happy pill.”) While taking certain antidepressants, some people may experience apathy or a loss of emotions. Lowering the dose or switching to a different antidepressant may help if this happens.
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Fact: Antidepressants, like all medications, have adverse effects, and one of the most prevalent is weight gain. Some antidepressants are more likely to induce weight gain than others, while others may actually lead you to lose weight. Consult your doctor if this is a concern.
Do antidepressants take years off your life?
They conducted their meta-analysis using a mixed-effects model that controlled for depression and other disorders.
Antidepressants were shown to have a 33 percent higher risk of dying prematurely in the general population than those who did not use the drugs, according to the study. Antidepressant users were also 14 percent more likely to experience a cardiovascular incident like a stroke or heart attack.
“We also assured that our findings weren't due to confounding by indication,” Maslej told us. This indicates that persons with more severe depression are more likely to use antidepressants, and if that's the case, we can't tell if the increased risk of death is related to antidepressants or to having more severe depression.”
“To resolve this issue,” Maslej added, “we re-ran our analysis on only the studies that assessed depression in patients before they started taking antidepressants.” “The risk of death remained high when we re-ran this analysis, indicating that confounding by indication was not a concern in our trial.”
SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants, which are usually regarded as the first generation of antidepressants, showed no significant differences.
Antidepressant medication did not appear to have a harmful effect on patients with cardiometabolic disorders including heart disease and diabetes, according to the research.
This supports the theory that antidepressants are beneficial to persons with cardiovascular illnesses but hazardous to healthy people because of their anticoagulant qualities.
How Can antidepressants affect a person mentally?
Antidepressants boost the action of substances in the brain called neurotransmitters. Increased activity of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine appears to help alleviate sadness and anxiety symptoms. However, because the brain is such a complicated organ, the reasons why these medications act are still unknown.
We do know that up to 70% of persons who try these medications report relief from depression and anxiety symptoms. When those who haven't found relief with one type of antidepressant attempt a different one, the percentage rises even more.
Do antidepressants have long term negative effects?
Antidepressant treatment can be divided into short- and long-term phases, with the acute and continuation phases falling under the short-term category, and the maintenance phase falling under the long-term category. Antidepressant use has risen due to an increase in long-term antidepressant treatment for depression. 3,4 An analysis of data from the UK General Practice database for the initial antidepressant prescriptions found that between 1993 and 2005, the average number of prescriptions per patient increased from 2.8 to 5.6, and a fraction of patients received 35 prescriptions on average. 4 Patients having a history of repeated depressive episodes, it has been suggested, may require long-term or indefinite antidepressant medication. 5,6 Changes in prescribing recommendations have also changed the focus of treatment to longer-term maintenance. The period of continuation treatment ranged from 4 to 12 months, while maintenance treatment ranged from 1 year to forever or indefinite, according to a recent worldwide study of 13 sets of prescription guidelines. 7
While there is evidence that antidepressant treatment should be continued after remission, there is less evidence for maintenance or long-term treatment.
8 While most instances of depression are treated in general care, a recent analysis found that no randomized clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of long-term treatment in primary care have been done. 10 However, a study of 14 naturalistic trials of long-term depression treatment conducted over a ten-year period indicated that depressed patients' results were dismal, with repeated relapses and wide variability both within and between people. 10 Patients in the non-drug-treated samples did not have worse outcomes, and some even had better results. Furthermore, a two-year trial of antidepressant use in primary and secondary clinical care indicated significant rates of recurrence (6063%) in patients who were taking sufficient antidepressant dosages. 11 After remission, those who were not treated with antidepressants had the lowest recurrence rate (26 percent ). 11
In a recent study on patient-perceived side effects in the Netherlands, it was discovered that 63 percent of patients reported 2.9 percent adverse effects on average during the course of 12 years of follow-up.
12 Insomnia, daytime sleepiness, restlessness, muscle spasms/twitching, dry mouth, profuse perspiration, sexual difficulties, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, weight gain, and dizziness were among the 12 items on the Antidepressant Side-Effect Checklist used by the researchers. 12 Dry mouth, excessive sweating, sexual dysfunction, and weight gain were the most commonly reported side effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). 12 Long-term SSRI usage is associated with discontinuation symptoms, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, and sleep disturbance (multiple long-wake episodes), according to two recent reviews of data in this field. 13,14 Osteoporosis and fractures, bleeding problems, hyponatremia13,14, and diabetes mellitus are all increased hazards. 15
It's also worth noting that qualitative research has found a variety of emotional negative impacts that aren't explored in most studies, like the one stated above.
12 Patients' perceptions on antidepressants were found to include sedative-like effects, emotional blunting, and emotional instability in a review of the literature.
16 These side effects are frequently overlooked and unmentioned in both medicine packaging and promotion.
17 As a result, negative consequences on mental well-being are frequently overlooked.
The information for this study came from a large online survey of New Zealand patients' experiences with antidepressants (N=1,829).
18 The goal of this study was to learn more about how patients felt about antidepressant medication. Antidepressants had been prescribed to about half of the participants for at least three years. Those who had been on antidepressants for more than three years experienced more severe side effects, such as “weight gain,” “addiction,” “not feeling like myself,” “withdrawal symptoms,” and “suicidality,” than those who had been on them for less than two years. 18
Patients' perceptions on long-term antidepressant use are little understood. This study looks at the experiences of patients who took part in the New Zealand survey and first started taking antidepressants between 1997 and 2001 to get a better understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of this type of treatment. The following are the questions it poses: What are the advantages of long-term antidepressant use, according to patients? What are the hazards or concerns that patients have concerning long-term use?
Do antidepressants affect intelligence?
Mitchell, who is also a professorial fellow at The Black Dog Institute, says, “This is the first time this has been clearly proven, and it should cause concern but not worry.” “Sure, it doesn't exist in humans, but it has intriguing potential. It raises the potential that these medications have distinct effects on those who aren't depressed.”
“Perhaps we should be a little more cautious about who we use antidepressants for than we are now. More investigation is required.”
He does point out, however, that SSRIs have been in use for over 25 years with no evidence of brain damage or a deleterious influence on cognitive capacity. However, there is a warning here concerning small modifications. Brain damage is induced by continuous depression rather than being a predisposing factor for it, according to an international collaborative study published in June of this year.
Recurrent depression decreases the hippocampus, according to a study published in Molecular Psychiatry that included scans of 9000 participants. Because a single event does not suffice, it makes a case for early detection of more serious persistent or recurrent cases. The hippocampus is a regenerating part of the brain, according to experts, and the effects of depression can be reversed with the right treatment.
Does your brain go back to normal after antidepressants?
Your brain can begin to repair from the consequences of depression once you are no longer depressed. We can now show that sadness lowers brain derived neurotrophic factor (growth hormones for brain cells) and that brain connections are weakened during prolonged depressive episodes.
The recovery from acute symptoms takes far longer than the process of mending the brain. In reality, our best estimates are that it takes 6 to 9 months for your brain to fully recover cognitive function and resilience when you are no longer symptomatically depressed.
Do antidepressants ruin your brain?
Antipsychotics have been shown to shrink the brain in a dose-dependent manner (4), while benzodiazepines, antidepressants, and ADHD medications have also been shown to cause lasting brain damage (5).
Do antidepressants affect height?
In a large convenience sample of boys enrolled in trials evaluating the skeletal effects of risperidone, we intended to duplicate the result of an unfavorable effect of SSRIs on longitudinal growth. As expected, SSRI usage was linked to a reduction in height growth, especially in boys in Tanner stages 3 and 4. This effect is of moderate amplitude, measuring about 1 cm for each year of SSRI medication throughout adolescence.
Only a few studies have looked at the effect of SSRIs on height, unlike psychostimulants, which have long been recognized to cause growth suppression30, 31. As previously mentioned, a relapse prevention trial indicated that children and adolescents who were randomly assigned to fluoxetine had a considerably lower rise in height by week 19 of the study than those who were randomly assigned to placebo. 5 However, after a year, the difference vanished, most likely due to high attrition. 6 Over the course of the 24-week Treatment of Resistant Depression in Adolescents (TORDIA) research, there was no difference in height change between adolescents randomized to SSRIs vs. venlafaxine. 32 A reanalysis of the data revealed that, while there was no difference in height change between the two groups by week 12 (Cohen d=0.05, 95 percent confidence interval: 0.36, 0.25; favoring SSRIs, SSRI n= 80 and venlafaxine n= 88), by week 24, venlafaxine was associated with a larger increase in height, narrowly missing significance (Cohen d= 0.29, 95 percent confidence interval: 0.05, 0.63; This effect is significant, even if it is slight, given that the average age of the participants was around 16 years, with females accounting for roughly 70% of the sample. 33 As a result, comparable to our previous work, most longitudinal growth should have been finished by study enrolment. 11 Furthermore, all TORDIA patients had been taking SSRIs for at least 8 weeks, the last four of which were at a dose similar to 40 mg of fluoxetine.33 As a result, their growth may have already been slowed, reducing the effect detected during the research. Finally, venlafaxine has a serotonin reuptake inhibitor effect, which could lead to growth inhibition.
The underlying pathophysiology of SSRIs' influence on longitudinal growth has not been addressed since the effect of SSRIs on longitudinal growth is not well acknowledged. Given that SSRIs disrupt serotonin signaling, which is known to influence GH secretion, impaired growth hormone (GH) secretion or activity has been implicated. 34 Indeed, there is some evidence that SSRIs can reduce GH secretion quickly after treatment begins. 8 This could explain why we found a greater impact in boys in Tanner stages 3 and 4, when height velocity is most likely to peak, making it vulnerable to disturbance. 35 GH encourages longitudinal growth throughout childhood and adolescence, but it is during puberty that its secretion grows the most rapidly. 36, 37 In comparison to paroxetine-exposed and unexposed newborns, SSRIs were related with reduced growth after in-utero exposure, and citalopram was associated with lower cord blood insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I concentration. 38 SSRIs have also been linked to a decrease in IGF-1 levels in adults. 39, 40 It's worth noting that GH promotes growth primarily via stimulating the release of IGF-I in the liver and peripheral tissues. 41 Finally, the anorectic action of psychostimulants has been proposed as a possible cause of growth suppression. 42 and 43 Given that their BMI Z-score was above normal (), this is improbable in our subjects.
Is it better to be off antidepressants?
- In April, a systematic study found that there is no obvious safe strategy to stop taking antidepressants for those who suffer from depression, anxiety, or both.
- Some persons may develop withdrawal symptoms or a return of their mental health condition after stopping antidepressants.
- Experts agree that gradually going off the medicine is the best way to avoid a return of depression symptoms.
What's the best antidepressant for energy?
In 2011, nearly 24 million prescriptions for Prozac were written. Fluoxetine is the generic version, and it is used to treat depression and anxiety. It offers people more energy than other antidepressants, which may not be as effective for persons who have insomnia in addition to depression. However, it may be beneficial to those who are low on energy. Fluoxetine is used to treat a variety of mental health concerns, including depression, OCD, and panic attacks.
Prozac isn't as harsh on the heart as other antidepressants, and it can help you lose weight. When compared to other SSRIs, Prozac can take longer to help with depression symptoms. It can also have a negative impact on your libido.