A bottle of Effexor
antidepressant pills in Miami, Fla., on March 23, 2004. FDA asked makers
of popular antidepressants to add or strengthen suicide-related
warnings on their labels as well as the possibility of worsening
depression especially at the beginning of treatment or when the doses
are increased or decreased. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Antidepressant use in North America has jumped in the last
two decades, perhaps because doctors are increasingly prescribing them
for conditions other than depression, like anxiety, pain, and insomnia.
For a new study, Jenna Wong, a Ph.D. student in the epidemiology,
biostatistics, and occupational health department at McGill University,
used data from an electronic medical record and prescribing system that
has been used by primary care physicians in community-based,
fee-for-service practices around two major urban centers in Quebec,
Canada.
Read More
The study includes prescriptions written for adults between January
2006 and September 2015 for all antidepressants except monoamine oxidase
inhibitors. Physicians participating in the study had to document at
least one treatment indication per prescription using a drop-down menu
containing a list of indications or by typing the indication(s).
During the study period, 101,759 antidepressant prescriptions (6
percent of all prescriptions) were written by 158 physicians for 19,734
patients. But, only 55 percent of those were written for depression.
Read More
They were also prescribed for anxiety disorders (18.5 percent),
insomnia (10 percent), pain (6 percent), and panic disorders (4
percent). In addition, for 29 percent of all antidepressant
prescriptions (66 percent of prescriptions not for depression), doctors
prescribed a drug for an off-label indication, especially insomnia and
pain.
Doctors also prescribed antidepressants for several indications that
were off-label for all antidepressants, including migraine, menopause,
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and digestive system
disorders.
“The findings indicate that the mere presence of an antidepressant
prescription is a poor proxy for depression treatment, and they
highlight the need to evaluate the evidence supporting off-label
antidepressant use,” the authors write in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Read More
The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Canadian Institutes of
Health Research) and the Max E. Binz Fellowship (Faculty of Medicine,
McGill University) sponsored the work. This article was originally published by McGill University. Republished via Futurity.org under Creative Commons License 4.0.
0 comments:
Post a Comment