Antidepressants Don’t Make People Happy, Major Research Claims

Today’s research claims that antidepressants are better at making people happy than not taking them at all.

According to the analysis, patients taking the drug did not have a significant improvement in quality of life compared to those with depression who did not take the drug.

Researchers have 17.5 million U.S. adults depression For more than 10 years, about half have been on medication and half have not.

The results showed a slight improvement in mental health in both groups, regardless of whether they were taking antidepressants.

Researchers at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia called for longer-term studies to assess the quality of life effects of patients taking antidepressants.

NHS doctors have already stopped prescribing medicines, which can cause many side effects.

Health services are currently advising patients with mild depression to provide a group therapy session before pills.

However, an independent expert said that the person given the drug was usually more depressed at first, so it was not possible to draw strong conclusions from the study, and therefore it was not a fair comparison.

They argued that other clinical studies have shown that the drug improves overall quality of life.

Taking antidepressants does not make people with depression happier than not taking them.

Between 2017 and 2018, approximately 7.3 million adults (17% of the adult population) took antidepressants in the United Kingdom. The latest date data is available.

Some of the most commonly prescribed are citalopram, sertraline and fluoxetine under the Celexa, Zoloft and Prozac brand names.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 27.6 million people over the age of 18 (13.2%) took medication regularly in the United States between 2015 and 2018.

The latest research published in the journal PLOS ONEWe used data from people who were investigated and had a medical examination as part of another study.

These included all adults in the country who were diagnosed with uninstitutionalized depression.

Their average age was 48, mostly female (67.9%).

More than half took antidepressants and 43% did not, but still had a clinical diagnosis.

Researchers checked health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scores when first identified by the database and two years later.

This measurement is used by the CDC as an indicator of both mental and physical quality of life and is determined by the patient answering questions in his or her health survey.

It can be divided into two areas: mental and physical health. A healthy person usually gets about 90 points on a scale.

Mental health scores increased in both groups over the two years, but physical scores decreased.

Mental health scores for people taking medications increased by 2.9% from an average of 40.32 to 41.50. Their health score dropped by 1.5% from 42.5 to 41.85.

On the other hand, those who did not take antidepressants had a 2.2% increase in their mental health score from 42.99 to 43.92. Their physical score dropped from 43.86 to 43.31 (1.3 percent).

Dr. Omar al-Bashimed, a clinical pharmacist at the University of Saudi Arabia, said there was no statistical difference between those taking the drug and those not taking it.

They argued that this suggests that the use of antidepressants does not significantly improve quality of life over time.

However, independent experts criticized the study for not taking into account the differences in depression levels between the two groups.

Dr. Gemalis, a psychiatrist at the University College London, said:

‘This type of bias is difficult to eliminate in such naturalistic studies that do not include design of experiments.

“Clinical trials using design of experiments have shown that antidepressants improve mental health-related quality of life.”

Professor Eduard Vieta, a psychiatrist at the University of Barcelona, ​​said:

“The inability to control the severity of depression between two different groups is a serious flaw and therefore little can be learned from this data.”