According to a recent report from a major medical journal, about 1 in 3 of people in the United States are on at least one drug that has depression as a potential side effect. Perhaps more disturbingly, this same study concluded that 1 in 4 Americans are on at least one drug that increase the possibility of suicide.
Among those who use these drugs, those who conducted the study discovered that warnings about depression and suicide which appeared on the labels weren’t just hypothetical. Those studied who were on the drugs that caused depression frequently experienced elevated bouts of the mental condition.
The more drugs a person took that listed depression as a side effect, the more likely it was for the person to experience the symptoms of depression.
The drugs studied weren’t just obscure medications used to treat patients in the last resort or in rare cases or cases of extreme necessity. Many of the drugs studied, for instance, included several common types of birth control, as well as a steroid commonly used to treat asthma and other conditions.
One of the recommendations of the study was that, in some cases, doctors need to be able to find a way to get their patients off of some of their medicines if more than one of them can cause depression.
Not every drug that causes depression is unlawfully dangerous, particularly if the manufacturer took the necessary steps to warn people about this side effect. Still, in some cases, a medical product liability claim may be available, such as if a patient did not know that a medicine would cause depression or suicidal thoughts.