Reuters, June 2018.
(Reuters Health) – More than one-third of American adults take medications that have the potential to cause depression, a U.S. study suggests.
As of 2015, about 38 percent of adults took one medicine with depression as a known side effect, up from about 35 percent a decade earlier, researchers report in JAMA. Over that same period, the proportion of U.S. adults taking at least three drugs linked to depression rose to almost 10 percent from about seven percent.
“Importantly, many of the medications associated with depression as a potential side effect include commonly used prescription drugs – some of which are also available over-the-counter without a prescription,” said lead study author Dima Qato, a pharmacy researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.