Adherence to Antidepressants Associated with Lower Mortality
A large study from Israel suggests that over a 4-year period, people who regularly took their prescribed antidepressants were less likely to die of any cause during that period.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in 2016, used data from an Israeli health provider that covers 53% of the nation’s population. It included 251,745 patients aged 40 and up who filled a prescription for an antidepressant at least once between 2008 and 2011.
Researchers led by Amir Krivoy looked at how much of the time people actually filled their prescriptions. Patients who filled their prescriptions more of the time were less likely to die during the study period than those who did not fill their prescriptions regularly.
Editor’s Note: This study by Krivoy and colleagues provides more evidence of the benefit of long-term antidepressants. People who have had two or three episodes of unipolar depression should consider long-term prevention with antidepressants over the course of their lifetime, in the way that people take blood pressure medications long-term to prevent heart attacks. In addition to lowering mortality, antidepressants also reduce the rate of relapse by 75% compared to placebo. More time on antidepressants also preserves hippocampal volume with aging.
