Antidepressants Linked to Dementia

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A study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that the use of antidepressant drugs was associated with an increased risk for the development of dementia. The researchers used the Taiwan National Health Research Database to perform a retrospective analysis of patients who were diagnosed with major depression and later developed dementia. “Treatment with tricyclic antidepressants was associated with a reduced risk of dementia, whereas treatment with SSRIs, MAOIs, heterocyclic antidepressants, and other antidepressants was associated with an increased risk of dementia,” they concluded.

Abstract →

 

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Lee, C. W. S., Lin, C. L., Sung, F. C., Liang, J. A., & Kao, C. H. (2016). Antidepressant Treatment and Risk of Dementia: A Population-Based, Retrospective Case-Control Study. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 77(1), 1-478.

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Justin Karter
Justin M. Karter, PhD, leads research news coverage and editorial strategy at Mad in America. He is the Acting Program Director of the PsyD in Clinical Psychology & Psychological Humanities at Boston College and part-time faculty with the Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics. His scholarship examines historical and cultural formations of mind, subjectivity, and personhood; the roles of activist movements and lived-experience communities, including the consumer/survivor/ex-patient (C/S/X) tradition; and how mental health discourses shape institutions, practices, and identities. He works across mad studies, critical psychology, philosophy of psychology, and rights-based global mental health. Methodologically, he specializes in critical qualitative inquiry and psychotherapy process research grounded in intersubjective and phenomenological approaches. He is the President of APA Division 24 (2025-26) and serves on the Executive Board of Division 32. Previously, he was a Research Officer to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. He earned his PhD in Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where his dissertation examined psychosocial disability advocacy in the global mental health movement. He also holds graduate degrees in Journalism and Community Psychology from Point Park University.

4 COMMENTS

  1. ….and ANOTHER disastrous downstream effect of SSRIs!

    We have birth defects, autism, addiction, extended withdrawal syndrome, increased suicide, violence and everything else on the warning sheets, and they are no better at relieving the manufactured illness called “depression” than a placebo.

    AND YET THEY ARE STILL ON THE MARKET!!!

    The power of the pharmaceutical companies to harm entire populations is unbridled, and fully supported (and even enforced) by the governments we elect to act on our behalf.

    Very bad joke indeed.

    We can be sure the study will be shot down ‘cos it wasn’t a gold standard RCT run by a pharmaceutical company.

    Every one of us should be printing and taking the abstracts of such studies into our primary care doctors as a matter of course. They simply don’t get to see this stuff otherwise.

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    • Absolutely agree, the antidepressants are NOT “safe.” And the doctors do need to overcome their pharmaceutical industry inspired delusions. And I, for one, did walk into a new doctor’s office with a whole bunch of research. I highly recommend it, as an ethical and self respecting doctor does learn quickly to be respectful to a well researched patient, who knows more than he about one’s own medical history.

      “The power of the pharmaceutical companies to harm entire populations is unbridled, and fully supported (and even enforced) by the governments we elect to act on our behalf.

      Very bad joke indeed.”

      And all preplanned by the worldwide powers that be, and we were forewarned.

      “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered….”

      http://www.themoneymasters.com/the-money-masters/famous-quotations-on-banking/

      Seems this anti-Semitic document may be the gameplay they are using:

      http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion1.htm

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  2. Common anticholinergic drugs were implicated to increase the risk for dementia a year ago. So we thought this included all the tricyclics, doxepin, elavil, imipramine, as well as old otc allergy drugs like Chlor-Trimeton and Benadryl. The study that hit the press in January of 2015 specifically said the risk was increased along with cumulative dose. Now, this study appears to say the opposite. Well, what to think?

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