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Fewer Diagnosed With Depression, But More And More British Women Opt for Anti-depressants
Prescriptions issued by GPs for drugs including Prozac and Seroxat have more than doubled over the past 11 years. More than two million patients are taking antidepressants for years at a time - many of them young women.
They seemed to be taking the drugs over a long period rather than to alleviate symptoms in the short-term.
Previous studies have shown psychological therapies can be as effective as drugs in tackling mental health problems, and may work better in the long term.
NHS guidelines recommend that kind of treatment, including cognitive behavioural therapy, often in preference to drugs.
But when faced by problems in accessing such counselling, women could be seeking the easy route of prescription drugs, not knowing what they are getting in to.
Many of them have subsequently had trouble getting the help they needed to treat their addiction, it is pointed out.
The research, published in the British Medical Journal, analyses all new cases of depression between 1993 and 2004 from anonymous computerised general practice records.
The database covers 170 GP surgeries and around 1.7million registered patients.
It found the number of prescriptions issued for antidepressants per patient rose from 2.8 in 1993 to 5.6 in 2004.
Data from the Prescription Pricing Authority also found more than 30million prescriptions for SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), such as Prozac and Seroxat, are issued each year - twice as many as the early 1990s.
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