Antidepressants Are Not Just Meant To Treat Depression, Reveals New Study

Antidepressants are popular for their use in the treatment of mental health conditions, primarily depression.

However, a new study has found that a number of patients are receiving antidepressants not for the treatment of depression, but a number of other conditions as well.

Not much research had been done previously in this area. But suspecting that antidepressants are, indeed, being prescribed for other conditions as well, a team of researchers from the McGill University in Montreal decided to take a look at the statistics.

According to study author Jenna Wong, the research team primarily wanted to look at the reasons why these antidepressants are prescribed, the frequency of prescriptions and the indications that call for antidepressant prescription.

During the study, the researchers looked at over 100,000 prescriptions written by physicians located over 160 primary care units in Quebec, Canada. The prescriptions covered more than 20,000 patients.

The participating doctors documented all the medications that they prescribed and recorded at least one indication or reason against each medication. All antidepressants were included in the investigation, except monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which is rarely prescribed.

The researchers figured out that only 55 percent of the antidepressants prescribed were actually being used for the treatment of depression. Other conditions for which the drug was being prescribed included pain, insomnia and panic and anxiety disorders.

Surprisingly, the team also discovered that about two-thirds of the drugs being prescribed to treat other patients were given to patients with off-label indications. That is, the drug was not approved by the regulatory agency for the treatment of that particular condition.

Some of these conditions for which antidepressants were found to be prescribed off-label included migraine, ADHD and digestive system disorder. The researchers claim that this off-label use of antidepressants is clearly wrong since there is no scientific evidence available to prove its effectiveness.

The complete details of the study have been published in the JAMA journal.