Antidepressants Cause Cardiovascular Disease, Study Finds

A recent study found that antidepressant use is causally linked to a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), surpassing the risk associated with major depressive disorder.

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A new study published in BMJ Mental Health finds that antidepressants are associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD). The authors employed Mendelian randomization, a method that uses genetic information to examine causal relationships, to establish that the observed association likely means antidepressants are causing CVD. Antidepressant use increased the risk of of every CVD the authors examined, including arrhythmias, atrial fibrilation, coronary artery disease, hypertension, heart failure, and stroke. The current research, led by Hongbao Cao of George Mason University, also finds that major depressive disorder (MDD), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and insomnia are all linked to CVD. While the current research showed a link between MDD and CVD, the authors note that link is likely completely accounted for by antidepressant use. The authors write:

“Our MR analysis revealed that the overall impact of the use of antidepressants on CVD is greater than that of MDD itself (OR: 1.30 for antidepressants vs 1.18 for MDD). Notably, our MVMR analysis established the use of antidepressants as an independent risk factor for CVD … Notably, after subtracting the effects of anti depressants, the causal influences of MDD on each of the examined CVD were diminished to insignificance, indicating that the effect of MDD on these diseases is primarily accounted for by the concomitant use of antidepressants. “

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Richard Sears
Richard Sears teaches psychology at West Georgia Technical College and is studying to receive a PhD in consciousness and society from the University of West Georgia. He has previously worked in crisis stabilization units as an intake assessor and crisis line operator. His current research interests include the delineation between institutions and the individuals that make them up, dehumanization and its relationship to exaltation, and natural substitutes for potentially harmful psychopharmacological interventions.

3 COMMENTS

  1. The problem is, research studies are ridiculously restrictive in what they investigate. We need studies into the general population listing medication status and employment status an showing incidents of all manor of chronic physical conditions as well as things like obesity, addiction, suicide, early death. We ought to be investigating forensically a building portfolio of real life courses of real human beings through a selfless and unprejudiced devotion to uncovering the actual social and psychological terrain of people who become diagnosed with mental illness and then the flowering of their problems after that, because the act of going to a psychiatrist or taking medications is an indication not of a breakthrough in but a breakdown of recovery. As soon as you think your problems, which are in your very consciousness, can be fixed by theories and pills that target no known disease process but immobilize networks or functions within the brain, then you have a reassuring illusion that will prevent any further encounter with, uncovering of, and understanding and therefore healing of the psychological and emotional traumas and complexes that result from the traumatic experiences you have gone through. This is the plain and simple truth people. Our brutality and stupidity results in the phenomena we call ‘mental illness’, but the only mental illness is this stupid and brutal society which conditions us into unhappy, unfree, confused, empty, greedy and frightened people. And for this life we threw Mother Nature and all our children’s futures under the bus. And we are the pinnacle of the evolution of life on Earth? We’re just pigs with a new technological innovation – thought, which is a process of domination and enslavement of our brains by the accumulated mistakes, brutalities and stupidities of the past. Oh how we laughed.

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  2. The problem is, research studies are ridiculously restrictive in what they investigate. We need studies into the general population in order to uncover the actual medical, social and psychological terrain of our real population – an intelligent society would do this, as we only ever began to do in the past, in the hey days of real social and anthropological research. The only way to uncover the fundamental terrain that will expose all the actual, real social problems and traumas and maladies, their real psychological and emotional and environmental and social consequences, including any medically induced pathologies, medical failures and misjudgements, miscalculation and violence are general studies of the general population, charting life courses and taking note of medical conditions or diagnoses, the shifting medication status and employment status as they arise, and any major life experiences and changes to socioeconomic and circumstances. Only then we can expose and prove the relations between life circumstances, medication, and outcomes for example all manor of chronic physical conditions as well as things like obesity, addiction, suicide, early death, what we call criminality and mental illness (two criminal social concepts if you ask me because the society makes us what we are then either blames us for being what we are or blames the perfect Brain of Mother Nature), and if we were intelligent and caring enough to do this kind of work as a society, it would produce the most invaluable understanding a society could have, and would surely be the first priority of any truth-based, enlightened government, not that there could, should or would ever be such a thing as an enlightened government. Then we would have the most important document this society could possibly have – one which exposes what is as it is, and an understanding of it would naturally act in an intelligent purposive way when it responds to the real rather then our malignant theories and invented ideologies and concepts around the problem like ‘mental illness’ which blames social pathologies on the brain of Mother Nature that only society could be blamed for conditioning, constraining and destroying with it’s infinite stupidities.

    We ought to be investigating forensically a building portfolio of real life courses of real human beings through a selfless and unprejudiced devotion to uncovering the actual social and psychological terrain of people who become diagnosed with mental illness and then the flowering of their problems after that, because the act of going to a psychiatrist or taking medications is an indication not of a breakthrough in but a breakdown of recovery. As soon as you think your problems, which are in your very consciousness, can be fixed by external, socially invented theories and pills that target no known disease process invented by external computer brained socially conditioned operatives who have never encountered or sought to understand the primary phenomena you are going through, and who could not even pretend to have begun unravelling the mysteries of consciousness and the brain, then you have for yourself a fatal but reassuring illusion that will prevent any further encounter with, uncovering of, and understanding and therefore healing of the psychological and emotional traumas and complexes that result from the traumatic experiences you have gone through. This is the plain and simple truth people. Our brutality and stupidity results in the phenomena we call ‘mental illness’, but the only mental illness is this stupid and brutal society which conditions us into unhappy, unfree, confused, empty, greedy and frightened people. And for this life we threw Mother Nature and all our children’s futures under the bus. And we are the pinnacle of the evolution of life on Earth? We’re just pigs with a new technological innovation – thought, which is a process of domination and enslavement of our brains by the accumulated mistakes, brutalities and stupidities of the past. Tell me what in the world is in a healthy state today, after 5,000 years of human civilization? I can think of only one thing, and that’s our human greed.

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