Depression Treatment May Not Make People Happier

Depression patients using antidepressants did not see better outcomes than those not on medication.

Researchers looked into 17.5 million US adults with depression for more than 10 years, with around half of the people were on medication and the other half were not on medication.

Results showed a slight improvement in mental health in both groups, regardless of whether they were on antidepressants.

‘Quality of life seen among patients who were on antidepressants for over two years was not significantly different from that seen among those not taking the drugs.’

The researchers from King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, called for more long-term studies on patients on antidepressants to evaluate their impact on quality of life.

NHS doctors are already moving away from prescribing the drugs, which can cause a host of side effects.

The health service now advises that patients with mild depression be offered group therapy sessions before pills.

But independent experts said strong conclusions from the study cannot be drawn because those given the drugs were typically more depressed at the start, and therefore it was not a fair comparison.

Their findings, published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, showed that the use of antidepressants was associated with some improvement in the mental component of SF-12 - the survey tracking health-related quality of life.

"Although we still need our patients with depression to continue using their antidepressant medications, long-term studies evaluating the actual impact of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions on these patients' quality of life is needed," said the researchers led by Omar Almohammed from the varsity.

"With that being said, the role of cognitive and behavioral interventions on the long term-management of depression needs to be further evaluated in an effort to improve the ultimate goal of care for these patients; improving their overall quality of life," he added.

Over the duration of the study, on average there were 17.47 million adult patients diagnosed with depression each year with two years of follow-up, and 57.6 percent of these received treatment with antidepressant medications.

The study was not able to separately analyze any subtypes or varying severities of depression. The team said that future studies should investigate the use of non-pharmacological depression interventions used in combination with antidepressants.

Source: Medindia