The recent suicides of celebrities Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have prompted many of us to look more closely at what may drive people to depression or to end their own lives.
One risk factor has gotten little attention in this discussion: the medications people take.
More than a third of American adults are using medications that have the potential to increase their risk of depression, a study published this week in JAMA finds, and nearly a quarter use medications that have suicidal symptoms as side effects.
The 203 drugs the researchers identified aren’t obscure; they include some of the most commonly prescribed medications around — like birth control, beta blockers for high blood pressure, and proton pump inhibitors for acid reflux. (You can see the full list at the end of this article.)
Strikingly, the researchers from the University of Illinois and Columbia University discovered, people using these drugs had an elevated risk of depression compared to the general population. And the more medications with depression as a side effect people took, the more their risk of the disease increased.
You can read the rest of this article on vox.com .
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