Antidepressants associated with significantly elevated risk of death, researchers find

NEWS

Antidepressant medications, most commonly prescribed to reduce depression and anxiety, increase the risk of death, according to new findings by a McMaster-led team of researchers.

COMMENT

Antidepressants are associated with a significantly elevated risk of death in more ways than one. In the UK, for example, the results of a recent BBC investigation added to the mounting evidence showing a link between anti-depressant drugs and homicide. After submitting a Freedom of Information request to the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the BBC discovered that, over the past three decades, 28 homicides committed in the UK have been associated with people taking Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). Discussing the finding, Professor Peter Tyrer, a psychiatrist at Imperial College London who has been studying SSRIs, stated: “It’s happened just too frequently with this class of drug to make it random.”