Antidepressants Can Be Used For Other More Than Just Depression

The stigma of mental illness is still surrounding many people, and to ease their situations, millions of those with depression take medication. However, new research has shown that many of those taking antidepressants are receiving medication to treat conditions other than depression.

Researchers from the McGill University in Montreal suspected that antidepressants were being used to treat other types of conditions, but they wanted to see exactly what is happening. The study's author, Jenna Wong told CBS News, "We wanted to see exactly why antidepressants were being prescribed, how often, and for what indications."

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reported that around three in 10 antidepressant prescriptions written by general practitioners in Quebec, Canada, were for conditions that have not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Doctors were not only treating depression, but conditions linked closely to it as well, such as pain and insomnia. But then, as The Los Angeles Times noted, they also prescribed antidepressants to treat other conditions like migraines, menopausal symptoms like hot flashes, attention deficit, and hyperactivity disorders, as well as digestive system disorders.

Antidepressants are also known to be prescribed for conditions such as anxiety disorders, panic disorders, but they too, are seen as variants of depression, thus the need to push antidepressants on these patients.

The authors of the study stated, "The mere presence of an antidepressant prescription is a poor proxy for depression treatment." They also added that there is need for better research on the effectiveness of using antidepressants to treat conditions other than depression.

Norman Sussman of the Treatment Resistant Depression Program at NYU pointed out, however, that antidepressants do have a wide range of potential uses. He said that doctors using antidepressants to treat other conditions validate the fact that these primary care physicians are savvy in utilizing drugs for managing a vast number of non-depressive disorders.

He said, "It demonstrates a certain sophistication on the part of practitioners to use these drugs off- label."

However, both Wong and Sussman agree that more research is needed for off-label uses of antidepressants.