University of Idaho Assistant Professor Colin Xu recently helped conduct a study that has brought to light information that contrasts the once popular belief that most negative antidepressant side effects lessen over time. This newfound knowledge will be revolutionary for clinician care of patients prescribed with antidepressants.
This study was done by Xu, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Communication, and Thomas T. Kim at Weill Cornell Medical College. As the researchers began looking deeper into the consequences of antidepressant medications over time, they became dedicated to finding results that would help to benefit patients who are diagnosed with depression.
“We wanted to see what was driving this discrepancy between patients’ experiences of worsening side effects and the common assumption in psychiatry that antidepressant side effects generally go away over time,” Xu said.
As they found out, a leading reason for the negative side effects of antidepressants seemingly wearing off over time is because patients who experience the very worst symptoms in the initial weeks often stop taking the medication prematurely, leaving only the people with mild side effects to be the subjects. This results in a skew of information that doesn’t always factor in the worst side effects antidepressants can have.
Published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, this study analyzed data from 2,833 patients treated with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) Citalopram, commonly known as Celexal.
When asked how he hopes this newfound discovery helps patients in the future, Xu responded that he has hopes that clinicians will take this information and make sure to keep client care the utmost priority through being proactive.
“However, what we found tells us there is a non-insignificant proportion of patients who experience severe side effects early on, and for some these people, trying to encourage them to simply endure the side effects may not be the right decision, because the side effects might not actually decrease with time,” Xu said.
He also mentioned that this may be a push for clinicians to take a closer look at a patient’s progress in the first few weeks rather than making assumptions based upon past experimental outcomes.
“Instead, clinicians should monitor patients who exhibit worsening and more severe side effect complaints—especially in the first six weeks of antidepressant treatment. And, for these patients, consider changing the type of treatment early on for these patients, such as to a lower dose, or even to a non-pharmacological treatment like psychotherapy, rather simply than encouraging them to persist with their medication in spite of the side effects.”
Confident in the work that has been done so far, Xu acknowledges that there are still questions left unanswered; ones he hopes to answer in the future.
“One question that remains unanswered is what types of side effects (e.g., central nervous system, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, etc.) most strongly increase the risk for patient drop out,” he said.
Xu and Kim’s research article can be found here.
Paige Wilton can be reached at [email protected].