The Shocking Reason Many Teenage Girls are Prescribed Antidepressants

A striking new study published in JAMA Psychiatry links hormonal contraceptives to depression, especially in teenage girls.

The findings aren’t surprising to many women.

A professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and lead supervisor of the study, Dr. Øjvind Lidegaard said:

“We have known for decades that women’s sex hormones estrogen and progesterone have an influence on many women’s mood. Therefore, it is not very surprising that also external artificial hormones acting in the same way and on the same centers as the natural hormones might also influence women’s mood or even be responsible for depression development.” [1]

Here is What the Study Found

For the study, Lidegaard and his team tracked the health of more than 1 million Danish women between the ages of 15 and 34 over the course of 14 years, using data from the National Prescription Register and the Psychiatric Central Research Register in Denmark.

Women who were diagnosed with depression before age 15 were excluded from the study.

The researchers uncovered the following:

• Women who used birth control pills with a combination of estrogen and progestin were 23% more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than non-users.

• Women who took progestin-only oral contraceptives had a 34% greater likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants.

• In women who used a contraceptive patch, antidepressant use doubled.

• The likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants increased 60% for women who used vaginal rings.

• Women implanted with hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs) had a 40% increased risk of being prescribed antidepressants.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation was that teens age 15 to 19 who took estrogen-progestin oral contraceptives were 80% more likely to be prescribed antidepressants.

Among women who did not use hormonal birth control, an average of 1.7 out of 100 began taking antidepressants in a given year. That rate increased to 2.2 out of 100 if the women took birth control.

While mood swings are often listed as a known side effect on the labels of contraceptives, Lidegaard’s study is the first to directly tie the products to clinical depression.

In the study, Lidegaard and his team theorized the difference in rates among women taking non-oral and oral contraceptives might be attributable to a difference in dose rather than how the contraceptives are administered.

They also noted that this association doesn’t imply that birth control alone causes depression. More research is needed to find out if there’s more to the story.

The team wrote:

“Adolescents seemed more vulnerable to this risk than women 20 to 34 years old. Further studies are warranted to examine depression as a potential adverse effect of hormonal contraceptive use.”

Unconvinced

Some experts take exception to the notion that birth control causes depression. The study did not show that depression is a direct result of contraception. [2]

They’re not surprised, though – many experts have suspected a link between the 2 for years.

Chelsea Polis, a senior research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health, explained:

“This is really resonating with a lot of women.

Part of that has to do with women’s individual experiences. Women do feel that clinicians aren’t taking their concerns seriously sometimes. And part of this reaction is this scientific literacy gap.”

Remember this?

Among women who did not use hormonal birth control, an average of 1.7 out of 100 began taking antidepressants in a given year. That rate increased to 2.2 out of 100 if the women took birth control.

These numbers show that, yes, the risk is higher, but it’s a relatively small risk to begin with.

The rates are even closer for women being diagnosed with depression at a psychiatric hospital. According to the study, 0.3 out of every 100 birth control users were diagnosed with depression versus 0.28 percent of non-birth-control users.

This does not add up to very many more cases in the birth control group, critics of the study argue.

Keyes said:

“You can have something that is twice the risk, but it can be a very rare outcome.”

However…

“This was a very well-conducted study. I think it’s an important piece of information. It lowers my confidence in my hypothesis, which is that hormonal contraception sort of regulates mood.”

Other Problems with Birth Control

Birth control has been linked to other serious health problems, as well. For example, combined estrogen-progestin birth control pills have long been tied to fatal blood clots.

Additionally, the permanent contraceptive device Essure, made by Bayer AG, has been blamed for injuring thousands of women.

Essure is inserted into a woman’s fallopian tubes, where it causes scar tissue to form and block a woman’s egg from becoming fertilized. Thousands of patients complained of adverse events, such as persistent pain, perforation of the uterus and/or fallopian tubes, internal abdominal bleeding, abnormal and irregular bleeding, and allergic or hypersensitivity reactions.

The device can also migrate outside of the fallopian tubes and become lodged in the uterus and other parts of the body.

In February 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) placed a “black box” warning on the Essure device’s packaging, but did not ban it, as many women had requested.

Sources:

[1] CNN

[2] Today

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

Read What Happened When Healthy People Were Given Antidepressants

Antidepressants are supposed to ease symptoms of depression, but yet another study shows the drugs may actually increase suicidal feelings in users. According to Danish researchers, the new study wrecks “potentially lethal misconceptions” about the safety of antidepressants. [1]

Click for larger version.

Statistics About Antidepressants

Researchers estimate that 8% to 10% of Americans take an antidepressant. Adults in the U.S. consumed 4 times more of the drugs in the late 2000’s than they did in the early 1990’s. [2]

Are more people depressed now than they were 20 years ago? Probably, yes. But that doesn’t necessarily account for the rise in antidepressant use.

You see, nearly 70% of people taking an antidepressant do not meet the criteria for clinical depression. That doesn’t mean they don’t feel sad, or they’re not going through hard times. It simply means that, from a purely diagnostic standpoint, they are not clinically depressed.

Not only that, but between 25% and 60% of antidepressants are prescribed for off-label purposes, including ADHD, autism, fibromyalgia, bipolar disorder, and even neuropathic pain.

Source: Mad in America

Findings of the Study

Danish researchers analyzed 13 trial studies, and conducted a study of their own involving 374 trial volunteers – all of them healthy – to see how antidepressants affected people who did not have depression. [1]

The researchers said they picked the patients that they did because earlier studies suggesting a link between suicide and antidepressants had been dismissed by those who blamed the deaths on the person’s supposed mental health condition and not the drugs.

Professor Peter Gøtzsche, of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, said:

“The drug industry always tries to blame the disease for these harms, never the pills. This is why our study is important. Healthy volunteers don’t have a disease — so we cannot blame the side effects of the pills on it.” [3]

When the participants were given antidepressant pills, levels of side effects nearly doubled, including suicidal feelings.

“Suicidal feelings” included anxiety, nightmares, and agitation.

Gotzsche said these feelings could be considered as “precursors to suicidality or violence.” [1]

Immediately, Detractors

However, Professor Guy Goodwin, past President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, called the conclusions “absurd.” He said:

“This manuscript claims to show that antidepressants double the risk of suicide and violence, but it does not. The methodology is fatally flawed and leads to conclusions that are highly misleading.

If ‘nervousness, anxiety, tremor, bad dreams and agitation events’ are risk factors for suicide or violence, then probably the majority of people in the UK would be at risk of suicide or violence, which obviously isn’t so.”

Phil Cowen, Professor of Psychopharmacology at Oxford University, agreed, saying:

“These side-effects are clinically significant, frequently distressing and an important topic for discussion between patient and clinician.

However, the notion that they are necessarily indicative of violence and suicide seems to me rather like arguing that transient annoyance with a colleague is much the same thing as attempted murder.” [3]

Drug Companies Seriously “Under-Report Harms of Antidepressants”

But Gøtzsche said that his findings are even more disturbing, considering drug companies seriously “under-report the harms of antidepressants related to suicide and violence, either by simply omitting them from reports, by calling them something else, or by committing scientific misconduct.” [4]

Gøtzsche is right about that.

It came out in 2005 that a Harvard psychiatrist and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly covered up a secret 1988 internal memo indicating that Lilly’s own controlled clinical trials of antidepressant drug Prozac had a significantly higher rate of suicide attempts, hostility, violence, and psychosis than 4 other commonly used antidepressants in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Earlier this year, another study conducted by Gøtzsche and his colleagues found that SSRI antidepressants – the most common class of antidepressants – doubled the risk of suicide and aggressive behavior in teens under 18.

That study, a review of 70 clinical trials of SSRI antidepressants, which involved more than 18,000 people, also found that 1 drug company misreported 4 deaths in favor of its product. The company also chalked up over 50% of suicidal incidents to “emotional lability” or “worsening of depression.”

No mention that either problem could have been the result of taking the drug itself.

And let’s face it – there’s a reason why antidepressants list “suicidal thoughts” as a potential side effect on their labels.

Serotonin and Depression: Lacking a Link

You’ve probably heard that depression is a result of a lack of brain chemicals, or an imbalance of them.

Researchers are still trying to figure out what causes depression, exactly, still arguing over whether a lack of the chemical serotonin is or isn’t actually the cause of depression.

And what do SSRI antidepressants do? They increase serotonin in the brain. SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. Well, there’s more to it than that. Maybe I’ll just let the Mayo Clinic explain:

“SSRIs ease depression by increasing levels of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is one of the chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) that carry signals between brain cells. SSRIs block the reabsorption (reuptake) of serotonin in the brain, making more serotonin available. SSRIs are called selective because they seem to primarily affect serotonin, not other neurotransmitters.”

For years, doctors and patients alike have believed that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin, not because anyone told them so, but because they just assumed that because SSRIs improve the symptoms of depression, depression must be caused by not enough serotonin.

Antidepressants might make you feel better, but because they interfere with the delicate chemistry of the brain, they might also be causing you irreparable brain damage.

It’s like saying that eating pancakes might help you deal with the stress of an upcoming business meeting, but they’re still making you overweight and spiking your blood sugar.

Many scientists, including Dr. Turhan Canli of Stony Brook University in New York, have come to believe that depression might have more to do with gut microbes, viruses, or bacteria than brain chemistry. In fact, Cali believes depression should be reclassified as an infectious disease.

Only more research can prove or disprove this theory, which doesn’t offer the quick fix that so many people find in antidepressants. But this theory makes sense, because 80% to 90% of the serotonin in the body is located in the gastrointestinal tract.

But wouldn’t it be worthwhile to find and treat the cause, rather than just treat the symptoms?

No one should guilt you into or out of taking any medication. (And if you’re taking antidepressants, this is NOT my way of telling you to stop taking them! I know people who seem to experience much more benefit than risk.)

However, if you’re going through a divorce, you’ve just lost your job, or you’re grieving a loved one, counseling, yoga, and other methods for dealing with your pain may be a safer option for you.

Sources:

[1] The Telegraph

[2] Scientific American

[3] The Sun

[4] The Express

Mad in America

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.