What are the long-term effects of antidepressants on a child’s brain?
“What are the long-term effects?” is a question that parents often, and rightfully, have about giving a child antidepressant medications such as Prozac, Zoloft, and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). When one’s child has (as my son Charlie does) minimal verbal language, there are simply a lot of questions that cannot be answered, including one that is altogether pressing, and simple: How does my child feel as a result of taking this medication? Charlie takes Zoloft for, among other reasons, his anxiety, and careful observation of his behavior and the accounts that autistic adults have shared about their own experiences on medication are invaluable to me—-and all the more so after reading about research about the potential dangers of antidepressant medication on children’s brains in the May 30th Scientific American.
The article specifically mentions the use of antidepressants to treat depression in children (we do not yet know if Charlie is prone to this, but it does run in the family). Notes Scientific American:
…..research suggests that suicide is only one of the potential risks. Studies have found that Prozac-like drugs might interfere with normal patterns of growth in children’s still developing brains. Although the research is not conclusive, it is possible that kids on antidepressants are trading one psychiatric diagnosis for another. Children who take these drugs—in some instances starting in the preschool years—could find short-term relief and then grow up into edgy, anxious, dysfunctional adults.
………
Amir Raz, a professor of clinical neuroscience in the psychiatry department at McGill University, is one of a handful of researchers raising concerns over the continued use of antidepressants in children and teens. “The human brain is developing exponentially when we are very young,” he says. “And exposure to antidepressants may affect or influence the wiring of the brain, especially when it comes to certain elements that have to do with stress, emotion and the regulation of these.”
Jay A. Gingrich, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University’s Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, has done research on mice who have been genetically altered so that they lack the ability to process serotonin; other research on the effects of serotonin on the developing brain has been done by Tim Oberlander, a pediatrician at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Oberlander found that “infants exposed to SSRIs before birth are less sensitive to pain than their counterparts who were not exposed.”
Other psychiatrists argue that antidepressants “do far more good than harm in children and teens.” David Rosenberg, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Wayne State University, is using brain scanners to study the brains of depressed children and adolescents and, while chemical changes in the brain do result, they are not what might be expected from the medication:
Rosenberg has found that a reduced level of glutamate [a “chemical messenger”] in certain parts of the brain is linked to depression. And the effect of antidepressants is clear: after treatment, glutamate becomes normal, and the symptoms of depression diminish. “When prescribed appropriately, antidepressants do far more good than not,” he says.
What is more, Rosenberg’s brain scans have shown that not using antidepressants in depressed patients might have a lasting influence on the brain as well. He has found that untreated depression eats away at important parts of the brain. “In adults, the longer you have the illness, the less gray matter you have in the amygdala, the hippocampus and the temporal lobe areas,” he says. All those brain regions are associated with thinking and learning. Preliminary results suggest the same is probably true with children and teenagers.
Rosenberg is careful to say that the benefits outweigh the potential for harm only when antidepressants are prescribed appropriately. ……………
And, as Scientific American underscores, depression is not so easy to diagnose in children and adolescents.
I suppose it ought also to be noted that the long-term effects, or simply the effects, of chelation on autistic children are not so well known.
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POSTED IN: Baby, Health, Medicine, Psychiatry, Psychology
9 opinions for What are the long-term effects of antidepressants on a child’s brain?
laurentius-rex
Jun 6, 2007 at 8:08 am
Rosenberg, schmosenberg, does that mean that I have lost so much grey matter it has warped my personality and turned me into a grumpy old git then ?
You would think to see the way these psychiatrists write that at my age I can’t have very much brain left at all, and am well on my way toward dementia, considering the way, never mind depression, that anxiety is supposed to eat away at what is supposed in our case to be an already diminished amygdala.
I have never had my brain scanned, indeed looks like I am now in a “non sexy” age group for brain research anyway.
On a couple of occasions in my teens (if I recall right) I was prescribed the old style antidepressants, didn’t have much informed choice then, and in my adulthood I have been on benzo’s and antipsychotics, the longest period being on risperidone. I don’t think in retrospect the risperidone did my brain a lot of good at all, but then I suppose neither does all the alcohol I have consumed, other peoples smoke I have breathed, let alone the petrol fumes.
It is amazing that the brain is so resilient and that any of us are still thinking at all, but I guess in the end it will be the rats who outsmart us all.
“And what is wrong with rats I ask you
Rotten rubbish, stinking sewer,
Wherever you’re they’re
And what’s more, there’s more of them,
They’re warfarin resistant super rats
Who’ll eat there own weight in an hour or two.
And when we burrow to survive the blast,
They’ll beat us to it, and have television too,
Or maybe skyTV.”
Never mind planet of the apes, leave the chimps to Chomsky and Pinker, what about the planet of the laboratory rats !!
For the record during my most recent consultation with a psychiatrist, she thought in my case that the usual SSRI’s would be contra indicated because they would just give me even more cause for anxiety.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jun 6, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Charlie had an MRI a few years ago and the result: The neurologist said “his brain is abnormal in the way that the brains of autistic people are abnormal.” Letting the “abnormal word pass for a moment—-not too much revealed for all the fuss.
Daisy
Jun 6, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Amigo takes meds for anxiety; he started taking them at age 12. The dose works well. I can only hope it’s not having a long-term detrimental effect; the current short -term (if you can say short-term for over two years of adolescence) results have been excellent.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jun 6, 2007 at 11:05 pm
We have found the right dose for Charlie after some tinkering—–no plans of changing it, not for awhile and not without some very hard thinking and reading of research.
Dana
Jun 8, 2007 at 4:30 am
I read this really excellent article in SEED’s online magazine to the effect that scientists may be wrong about how SSRIs work. Turns out that adult human brains may not stop making new brain cells after all, and that when we are depressed, that neurogenesis just sort of stops. SSRIs seem to turn that process back on, something completely separate from whatever they do to your serotonin level.
That aside, SSRIs *have* been linked to neurological damage in some neurotypical people, so it’s not much of a stretch to wonder what they do to autistic people as well.
liyan
Jun 9, 2007 at 8:52 pm
My son is 9 years old and we have just recently found out that he has a brain disorder. he suffers from seizures, learning disorder and a mood disorder simular to those found in autistic children. His MRI shows Arnold Chiari Malformation and they found the rest of his brain to be unremarkable. He is currenly on DEPEKOTE which is supposed to help him surpress his disorders, but the long term side effects scare me! We are now at the point where he is being seen by a Psychiatrist and he will be prescriped another medication (anti-depressant), I am confussed! I want my son to be helped but I am not to sure about the log term consqueces.
laurentius-rex
Jun 12, 2007 at 8:41 am
If there is one thing more dangerous than a curebie, then it is a $cientologist. CCHR is a bogus front for a group of people who make the mercurians beliefs look rational in comparison.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jun 12, 2007 at 9:47 am
Liyan,
My son takes medication too–Risperdal and Zoloft—I am always having to weigh the day to day effects over longer-term worries. Is your son doing better with another medication?
Genetics56
Jul 22, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Dear Dana,
Thank you for sharing the information you provided in your response to this blog. I’m very interested in genetics (human genetics) and have studied a lot about depression and the genetic correlate. I have not yet come across the article you provided us. Thank you!
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