Page 84 - Men’s Health - USA (December 2019)

MIND

Between

a Pill

and a

Hard Place

New research reveals that long-term use of

antidepressants may raise your risk of serious
health problems. But getting off the medication poses

its own set of risks. BY OLIVER BROUDY

T STARTED AROUND fi ve years ago. no longer led to bunkered isolation. A recent research that suggests that some
My boys were two and four, my wind chime replaced the tolling of doom. antidepressants—including the class
wife was a stranger, and my profes- These days, life feels almost Brady known as SSRIs (selective serotonin
I sional life felt like an avalanche of Bunch normal. Every morning, I wake reuptake inhibitors)—may increase
uncertainty and stress. In the morning, up humming like an idiot. Feed the kids, the risk of heart attacks, seizures, and
the air smelled like cinders; in the eve- water the plants, pop the pill. Heck, I dementia, among other things. Granted,
ning, the sun looked like blood. When could do this forever. Many people do. the data remains pretty squishy—more
people opened their mouths, I stared at According to the CDC, 8.6 percent of correlation than causation. And no one
them blankly. All I could hear was the guys 12 and older in the United States has conducted long-term research on
howling of orcs. currently take antidepressants—up from antidepressants for anywhere close to
More than half of guys who have symp- 5.1 percent in 2002—and roughly one the amount of time people have been on
toms of depression—and may benefi t fi fth of them have been doing so for ten them—in some cases 25 years.
from antidepressants—don’t seek profes- years or more. But it’s enough to make you wonder
sional help. I’m not one of those guys. Thing is, there’s a lot we don’t know whether the subscription model of men-
My primary-care doc handed out the about antidepressants and how and tal health—$20 a month or whatever for a
candy: 150mg of bupropion, a starter why they interact with the brain, Tier 1 membership in the Sane and Func-
dose. I whined, and she doubled it. largely because we don’t understand tional Club—is all it’s cracked up to be. Yasu + Junko/Trunk Archive
Life got less jagged. I discovered a new- most of the hows and whys of the brain It’s a tough call to make, particularly
found emotional resilience. Marital spats itself. What we do know is that there is now, when the stigma of depression has

86 December 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH