Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “antidepressants”
80% of women in the U.S. will experience at least one pregnancy and 84% of babies will be breastfed. In addition, more than half of women use medications during lactation. There are many reasons for using medications during breastfeeding, but the post-partum period is a time of high vulnerability to mood and anxiety episodes, and the effects of a mood …
We have several other posts on this topic which trace the evolution of our thinking about the risks of using antidepressants during pregnancy. Generally, the data continues to support our view that the risks of depression during pregnancy, both in terms of effects on the mother and effects on the child, usually outweigh the risks of antidepressant use. Another large …
Boadie Dunlop, M.D., M.S., and Helen Mayberg, M.D., both of Emory University School of Medicine, and colleagues assessed resting-state functional connectivity between the subcallosal cingulate cortex (SCC) and three other brain regions—the dorsal midbrain, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior insula, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex—in 122 patients with depression. The patients were then randomized to 12 weeks of cognitive-behavioral …
What happens in the body when antidepressants work. An international group of researchers, led by Professor Gustavo Turecki of McGill University and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, examined changes in the activity of genes (measured using mRNA) in the blood in over 400 patients who were being treated with antidepressants. They identified one gene that was significantly more active …
Psychiatrists and patients alike are hungry for new antidepressants. Few new medications have been developed in the last 10 years that are effective antidepressants, and those that have come to the market have all been variants of existing medications. The only really novel treatments for depression in the last 15 years in psychiatry are ketamine and TMS, both of which …
How Long Should You Take Antidepressants – Factors to consider, the importance of first getting well, how long it takes for the brain to heal after depression.
Is there a role for functional brain imaging in depression? Many people seeking treatment are interested in the notion that the brain imaging, particularly imaging that looks at neural activity, might be useful in guiding treatment. Up until the last couple of years the answer to this question has always been that the role is primarily restricted to research settings …
What is the difference between efficacy and effectiveness? We tend to use these terms interchangeably in our posts on this site, but the two are different and the difference can be important. Efficacy refers to the power of a treatment to achieve a given outcome assuming that the patient is perfectly compliant and completes the treatment. Effectiveness addresses the more …
