Depression- Weight Gain and Antidepressants
The exact relationship between antidepressants and weight gain isn’t clear. But weight gain is a reported side effect of nearly all antidepressant medications currently available.
Certain antidepressants are more likely to cause weight gain than are others. For example, tricyclic antidepressants and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) are more likely to be associated with weight gain than are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The exception to this may be long-term use of paroxetine (Paxil) — an SSRI that is more likely to cause weight gain than are other SSRIs.
There are two things to consider when someone taking a S.S.R.I. commits suicide. First, the depression may have gotten worse, and the person may have committed suicide because of the condition. Second, the patient may have been misdiagnosed with depression when they were actually bipolar. Bipolar patients need a mood stabilizer. An S.S.R.I. medication can worsen a bipolar patient’s symptoms and drive suicidal tendencies.
Weight gain during antidepressant treatment can be either a sign of improvement in patients who have weight loss as a symptom of depression or a residual symptom in patients who overeat when depressed. However, significant weight gain during the acute phase of treatment or weight gain that continues despite achieving full remission of depressive symptoms is likely to be a side effect of antidepressant treatment. Weight gain is a relatively common problem during both acute and long-term treatment with antidepressants, and it is an important contributing factor to noncompliance.
Weight Gain in a Pill
The pills millions of people take every day for diabetes, clinical depression, psychotic disorders, high blood pressure, and other illnesses are small, weigh almost nothing, and aren’t packed with calories.
Stacked up against a super-sized restaurant meal, a bucket of butter-laced popcorn, or a jumbo cola, pills usually don’t raise red flags when people worry about putting on pounds.
One obvious solution is to switch to a medication which causes less weight gain, but this may not work in every case. People are very individual in which medications will relieve their depressive symptoms and these medications may not provide an adequate solution.
Use in children
Antidepressants carry a strong warning regarding their use in children and adolescents. This warning admonishes doctors and parents that ” Patients who are started on therapy should be observed closely for
clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior”. If your child is taking an antidepressant you must notify the prescriber at once if you notice any change in his behavior.
There is a category of antidepressants that seek to balance the brain’s naturally-occurring chemicals, serotonin and norepinephrine. These drugs are not likely to cause weight gain in the short term and have a low tendency to cause this problem over the long term. Medications in this category include nefazodone, venlafaxine and duloxetine. A medication that also works with the brain chemical dopamine is bupropion. Bupropion is unlikely to cause weight gain, and in fact, may cause some weight loss. It is also used to help people quit smoking.
Paroxetine may be more likely to cause weight gain than the other SSRIs during long-term treatment, and bupropion and nefazodone may be less likely to cause weight gain than the SSRIs in the long term, although more studies are necessary to confirm these impressions.
