Hooked on SSRIs: Antidepressant Use Doubles in U.S.

(NaturalNews) Antidepressant use more than doubled in the United States between 1996 and 2005, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Columbia and University of Pennsylvania and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

"Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," the researchers wrote. "Not only are more U.S. residents being treated with antidepressants, but also those who are being treated are receiving more antidepressant prescriptions."

The number of people being treated with antidepressants increased from 13 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005, rising from 6 percent to 10 percent of the population. More than 164 million antidepressant prescriptions were given out in 2008, generating $9.8 billion for pharmaceutical companies.

Not only selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac have seen rises in use, but also other varieties of antidepressant and psychoactive drugs.

"During this period, individuals treated with antidepressants became more likely to also receive treatment with antipsychotic medications and less likely to undergo psychotherapy," the researchers wrote.

The researchers speculated that the high out-of-pocket cost of therapy combined with a decreasing stigma on the use of psychotropic drugs have contributed to the increasing popularity of psychiatric drugs. They also noted that while promotional spending on antidepressants held relatively steady between 1999 and 2005, the percentage that was devoted to direct-to-consumer marketing increased from 3.3 percent to 12 percent.

Eric Caine of the University of Rochester, who was not involved in the study, expressed concern that people are placing too much faith in psychiatric drugs.

"Antidepressants are only moderately effective on population level," he said, and therapy has been proven at least as effective, if not more so. He also noted that there has been no increase in mental health corresponding to increasing use of psychiatric drugs.

"There are no data to say that the population is healthier," he said. "Indeed, the suicide rate in the middle years of life has been climbing."

Antidepressants carry a risk of potentially serious side effects, including suicide.

Sources for this story include: www.alertnet.org.

Millions of patients should never be prescribed antidepressants, scientists say

(NaturalNews) Roughly half the population should never be prescribed antidepressant drugs because they are only likely to become more depressed, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute and published in the journal Neuron.

Scientists have known for some time that antidepressant drugs only work in about half of patients. Research has discovered that although the drugs are designed to raise circulating levels of the neurotransmitter chemical serotonin in the brain, they actually produce the opposite effect in large numbers of people.

"The more antidepressants try to increase serotonin production, the less serotonin [they] actually produce," researcher Rene Hen said.

An estimated 11 percent of U.S. women and 5 percent of men in non-institutionalized settings are currently taking antidepressants.

Genetic and brain imaging studies have led some scientists to believe that the explanation for this effect lies in the actual make up of the brain, specifically in the numbers of 1A serotonin receptors found in the raphe neurons deep in the brain's center. Although higher numbers of these receptors on raphe neurons are correlated with decreased responsiveness to antidepressants, scientists have had trouble testing the hypothesis directly.

In the new study, scientists genetically engineered mice to contain either high or low numbers of 1A receptors in their raphe neurons. They found that in mice with higher levels of receptors, antidepressants actually lowered serotonin levels rather than lowering them -- consistent with the effect seen in people whose bodies resist the drugs.

The researchers then lowered the number of receptors in these mice and re-tested them. The mice then became responsive to the drugs.

"By simply tweaking the number of receptors down, we were able to transform a non-responder into a responder," Hen said.

Rather than suggesting that antidepressant use be scaled back, however, Hen and colleagues expressed eagerness to find ways to suppress the activity of some of the 1A neurons in the raphe receptors of people who are resistant to the drugs, so that everyone can be treated with them equally.

Sources for this story include: www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthne... ; www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/....

Antidepressants during pregnancy cause alarming 68 percent increased risk of miscarriage

(NaturalNews) Back in 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that exposure to the antidepressant paroxetine (sold as Paxil, Paxil CR, and Pexeva) in the first trimester of pregnancy might increase the risk for birth defects, especially heart problems. Did this halt the widespread prescribing of paroxetine and other antidepressants for pregnant women? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

In fact, background information in a just published study in CMAJ (the Canadian Medical Association Journal) notes the drugs are frequently used in pregnancy. Almost 4 percent of pregnant women take them at some point during the first trimester -- and the result can be tragic. The new research concludes expectant moms taking antidepressants have an astounding 68 percent increase in the overall risk of miscarriage.

Most previous studies on the use of these medications in pregnancy have been small and haven't looked as miscarriages as a main outcome. But this large study by researchers from the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center (CHU Ste-Justine) evaluated the association between antidepressant use in pregnancy in detail -- analyzing classes, types and doses of the drugs and the risk of miscarriage.

In all, the scientists investigated data on 5124 women in Quebec from a large population-based cohort of pregnant women who had miscarried by 20 weeks of gestation. Then they compared their findings to a large sample of women from the same registry who carried their babies full term. Of the women who lost their babies, 284 had taken antidepressants during pregnancy.

All the popular SSRI drugs were linked to miscarriage risk

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), especially paroxetine, were associated with the increased risk of miscarriage. Venlafaxine (sold under the brand names Effexor, Alventa, Argofan, and Trevilor), which is the sixth most commonly prescribed antidepressant in the U.S., belongs to another slightly different class of SSRIs called arylalkanolamine serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) and, like paroxetine, it was also especially likely to cause miscarriages. In addition, higher daily doses of antidepressants and a combination of different drugs raised the risk substantially.

"These results, which suggest an overall class effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are highly robust given the large number of users studied," Dr. Anick Berard of the University of Montreal and the Director of the Research Unit on Medications and Pregnancy at CHU Ste-Justine wrote in the article.

Overall, an astounding number of Americans, some 27 million, now take SSRIs. However, as NaturalNews has previously reported, new dangers from these drugs continue to be uncovered. For example, last December Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers announced their findings that taking SSRIs significantly raises the risk of strokes and death in women after menopause (http://www.naturalnews.com/027841_S...).

For more information:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/...

More evidence emerges that Americans are drugged out of their minds

(NaturalNews) As NaturalNews has previously reported, the U.S. is a nation seemingly hooked on mind-altering drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/027054_d...). A study released last fall in the Archives of General Psychiatry documented a dramatic increase in the use of antidepressant drugs like Prozac since l996. In fact, these medications are now the most widely prescribed drugs in the U.S.

Think Americans are maxed out on the number of psychiatric meds that huge numbers of them are taking? Think again. A new report says U.S. adults are increasingly being prescribed combinations of antidepressants, anti-anxiety and antipsychotic medications -- and they could be experiencing serious side effects as a result.

The study, published in the January edition of Archives of General Psychiatry, investigated patterns and trends in what is known as psychotropic polypharmacy, meaning the prescribing of two or more psychiatric drugs. Ramin Mojtabai, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Mark Olfson, M.D., M.P.H., of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, examined data gathered from a national sample of office-based psychiatry practices. In all, the researchers looked at the medications prescribed between 1996 and 2006 during more than 13,000 office visits to psychiatrists by adults.

The results showed a significant increase in the number of mind impacting drugs prescribed over these years. The percentage of doctor visits which resulted in two or more medications being prescribed increased from 42.6 percent to 59.8 percent. What's more, the percentage of visits at which three or more drugs were prescribed soared from 16.9 percent to 33.2 percent. And the median number of medications prescribed at each appointment with a psychiatrist increased on average by of 40.1 percent.

The combinations of drugs being prescribed with increasing frequency include antidepressants with sedative-hypnotics (the most prescribed combination), antidepressants given along with antipsychotics and combinations of several kinds of antidepressants. But at least the doctors prescribing these mixed drugs are only doing so based on solid research showing the combos are safe and effective, right? Wrong.

"Because scant data exist to support the efficacy of some of the most common medication combinations, such as antipsychotic combinations or combinations of antidepressants and antipsychotics, prudence suggests that renewed clinical efforts should be made to limit the use of these combinations to clearly justifiable circumstances," the authors wrote in their paper. "At the same time, a new generation of research is needed to assess the efficacy, effectiveness and safety of common concomitant medication regimens, especially in patients with multiple disorders or monotherapy-refractory conditions."

In other words, drugs are being given to patients in all sorts of combinations without sound science showing they even work well together -- much less that these drug cocktails are safe to take. In fact, the researchers point out specific dangers of taking multiple psychiatric drugs.

"While the evidence for added benefit of antipsychotic polypharmacy is limited, there is growing evidence regarding the increased adverse effects associated with such combinations," they concluded. A case in point: some combinations cause increases in body weight and total cholesterol level. Others have been associated with an increase in fasting blood glucose level.

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...