Scientists from King Saud University found that over time, using antidepressants is not associated with significantly better health-related quality of life, compared to people with depression who do not take the drugs.
The research is published in PLOS ONE and was conducted by Omar Almohammed et al.
It is generally well known that depression disorder has a big impact on the health-related quality of life of patients.
While studies have shown the efficacy of antidepressant medications for the treatment of depressive disorder, these medications’ effect on patients’ overall well-being and quality of life remains controversial.
In the study, the team used data from a large study that tracks the health services that Americans use.
Over the duration of the study, on average there were 17.47 million adult patients diagnosed with depression each year with two years of follow-up, and 57.6% of these received treatment with antidepressant medications.
The team found the use of antidepressants was associated with some improvement in the mental component of SF-12—the survey tracking health-related quality of life.
However, when this positive change was compared to the change in a group of people who were diagnosed with the depressive disorder but did not take antidepressants, there was no strong association of antidepressants with either the physical or mental.
In other words, the change in the quality of life seen among those on antidepressants over two years was not strongly different from that seen among those not taking the drugs.
The study was not able to separately analyze any subtypes or varying severities of depression. The authors say that future studies should investigate the use of other depression interventions used in combination with antidepressants.
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