Antidepressants may alter personality

Clarification added January 6, 2010.

A wealth of research has shown that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) are effective at reducing the symptoms of depression—though new research suggests that study populations limited to those with severe depression may skew these findings, and that antidepressants only show truly significant benefits over placebo in patients with major depressive disorder.* A new study out of Northwestern University may shed some new light on how these antidepressants impact personality—and whether that influence may in fact be key to their success in combating depression. In a placebo-controlled study of 240 adults with major depressive disorder, psychologist Tony Tang and colleagues found that, not only did participants taking the medication show improved reduction in depression symptoms compared with those taking the placebo, but that they also showed marked differences in personality—exhibiting less neuroticism and more extroversion, in particular.

The findings, published in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, suggest that the mechanism through which antidepressants function may be by altering personality traits that often characterize depression. Previous study has shown that high levels of neuroticism can indicate a risk for depression, while other research has found a substantial overlap in the genes associated with both depression and severe neuroticism. Additionally, earlier investigations have shown that both neuroticism and extroversion are associated with the brain’s serotonin processing systems, which are targeted by SSRI antidepressants.

In this most recent study, 120 participants were randomly assigned to take the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil and Seroxat), and, as in most trials of antidepressants, researchers found that they exhibited slightly greater improvement in depression symptoms compared with participants taking the placebo. Yet, when researchers analyzed how the SSRI impacted personality, they found that people in the trial group showed a dramatic decrease in neuroticism and increase in extroversion not seen in the control group. Compared with the placebo group, on average, participants who took paroxetine had a 6.8-fold change in signs of neuroticism, and 3.5 times as much change in signs of extroversion.

The study authors are hopeful that this latest research might pave the way for continued research into the mechanism through which SSRIs help patients battle depression.

*This was added in light of a study released on January 5, 2010 by the Journal of the American Medical Association finding little benefit of antidepressants to patients with mild and moderate depression.

parakori

The truth is always a compound of two half- truths,
and you never reach it,
because there is always something more to say…

== Tom Stoppard ==

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

== Edith Sitwell ==

http://japan-russia.jimdo.com/four-types-of-characters/
brooklynjg

This is a confusing and contradictory not to mention ill informed post. How does a “wealth of research” indicating the benefits of antidepressants match up with the study she cites in which antidepressants have a “slight benefit” over placebo? Please read the “wealth of research” which indicates antidepressants barely outperform placebo and often don’t outperform placebo at all. Please read Healy, Kirsch, Antonucci and Khan for rigorous meta-analyses which casts real doubt on antidepressant efficacy. When one considers the deleterious and even dangerous side effects (suicidality, for one) it seems ethically dubious to prescribe a medicine which has so little benefit-(except, it should be added, in cases of the most severe depression.)

Just today a major study was published which reiterates, yet again, how weak the benefits of antidepressants really are for anything other than severe depression. Ms. O’Callaghan should do better research before putting “pen to page.” As it stands, she sounds like a spokeswoman for big pharma. I’m sure she can do better.
http://truthman30.wordpress.com/ truthman30

These pills are poisonous and this article is extremely badly researched.
Tiffany O’Callaghan

@brooklynjg, thank you for your comments. You make an excellent point about the recent findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The “wealth” of research I refer to are the numerous studies showing benefits of antidepressants over placebo in treating patients with depression, broadly defined. Or, as the authors in the recent JAMA study put it: “Antidepressant medication has been shown to be superior to placebo in thousands of controlled clinical trials over the past 5 decades.”

Yet, as you emphasize, and the study highlights, these findings may be misleading, as studies often disproportionately include patients with major depressive disorder, or severe depression, but their results are applied to patients with far less severe cases of depression. (In this particular study, however, participants were all diagnosed with major depressive disorder.)
brooklynjg

I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I am a practicing psychotherapist who has been in the field for 25 years. It wasn’t until ten years ago that I finally learned the research on antidepressant efficacy was quite equivocal. It is difficult to get past the ubiquitous and profoundly dishonest advertising of the drug companies as well as all the so called experts who have been so corrupted by big pharma money.

Unless there is a very clear benefit, these medications with so many negative side effects should not be prescribed.
http://www.tangledsynapses.com tangledsynapses

Depression and antidepressants could certainly alter personality. And there is a reason for that. The constant barrage of pesky depression symptoms such as blurred vision, fatigue, suicidal toughts at some point would affect the body response to fear to an extent the individual becomes conditioned to negative stimuli. The individual becomes óther person´as lay people may say