Evidence is mounting that antidepressants can have the precise opposite effect to the one intended, says Rachel Kelly

Here are two numbers: see if you can spot the connection — and a disturbing conclusion, according to a debate yesterday at the House of Commons.

First number: There were 61 million prescriptions for antidepressants issued last year, a rise of seven per cent on the previous year, over double the figure in 2005, and at a cost of £285 million.

Second number: There were 1.1 million mental health disability claimants in 2014, two thirds of whom were classified as having a depressive or anxiety disorder, a rise of 103 per cent since 1995. Claimants for other conditions fell by 35 per cent in the same period.

So the rise and rise of drug use for those suffering from the Black Dog is going hand and hand with the rise in the number of people who are suffering from long term disability. Is this is a case of cause and effect?

While the jury is still out, I for one think this is indeed the worrying conclusion. I’m not alone. Robert Whitaker, the Pulitzer shortlisted journalist says that long-term use of antidepressants can lead to worse outcomes for patients.

“There is substantial evidence in the scientific literature that antidepressants increase the chronicity of the disorders they are used to treat, and increase the risk that a person will become disabled.”

Oh dear. He continues: 

“The dramatic rise in disability and depression and anxiety seen across the western world is being caused, in large part, by the very drugs which are being used to treat them.”

Meanwhile Dr Joanna Moncreiff, consultant psychiatrist and senior lecturer at University College London, says:

“The increasing use of all types of drugs for mental disorders and especially antidepressants in England since the 1990s does not appear to have improved the rising trends in disability claims for these conditions. We need to have a serious rethink about current level of prescribing as it may well be that, for various reasons, the drugs are in fact contributing to the disability burden resulting in significant social and economic costs.”

Hear, hear! As someone who has had two serious tussles with depression, and been admitted to hospital as a result, my own experience of the drugs is that they did help at the height of my depressive episodes. But the side effects were awful: I suffered a parched mouth, constipation, and blurred vision, while I ballooned in weight to eleven stone at just five foot two.  I soon started taking other drugs to deal with the side effects in a classic pattern – at one point I was taking six or seven pills a day. We had a white board in my bedroom at home to try and remember what pills to take when. I had indeed joined the ranks of the disabled. 

Thanks to therapy, exercise, changing my diet and the healing power of consoling poetry, I managed to wean myself off medication several years ago. I bless the day I stopped popping the pills. 

The release of these shocking figures this week I hope will prompt a rethink about the drugs. While I acknowledge their efficacy in a crisis, there use should be at best short term.

It’s a view shared by Peter Kinderman, head of the British Psychological Society:

“It is clear that psychiatric drugs can have very significant adverse effects, especially when taken long term,” says Kinderman.  

“And we have seen growing evidence of the effectiveness of evidence-based psychological therapies.  We therefore urgently need to drop the ‘disease model’ of mental health, and embrace a human-centred model, with many more social and psychological interventions and many fewer prescriptions of potentially harmful drugs.” 

For more info, check out the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry at cepuk.org

Rachel Kelly is a mental health campaigner and the author of Walking on Sunshine and Black Rainbow. She teaches workshops on how to achieve good mental health, including her “Healing Power of Poetry” course at the Idler Academy