Study: Antidepressants aren’t just for depression
By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times
Antidepressants didn’t get to be the third-most commonly prescribed medication in the United States for nothing. In fact, says a new study, the medications taken by more than 10 percent of American adults may be so ubiquitous because they are used to do so much.
Depression medication, a study suggests, has become a “do something” drug for primary care physicians to offer when a patient’s complaints may only be vaguely related to depression.
In a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday, researchers reported that close to three in 10 antidepressant prescriptions written between 2006 and 2015 by general practitioners in Quebec, Canada, were for conditions for which the medications have not been approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
