According to a new study conducted by researchers at the McGill University, doctors tend to prescribe antidepressants for a wide array of disorders. The professionals in charge of the study believe that this practice should stop seeing as the medication is not approved by the FDA for the treatment of other conditions.

The article published in the “Journal of the American Medical Association” magazine stated that approximately three in ten prescriptions for antidepressants released by Quebec medical practitioners are not on the FDA’s approved list.

The CDC estimates that approximately 1 in 10 Americans were prescribed antidepressants. However, almost half of them are taking the drugs for other conditions.

Antidepressants are prescribed for the treatment of other conditions besides depression because some physicians noticed that they are more efficient than the ones created specifically for the disorders in question.

For example, there is a group of doctors that believe that antidepressants show better results in the treatment of a number of anxiety disorders, pain syndromes, and sleep disturbances. The physicians also think that the drugs used to treat depression cold show results in cases in which other treatments failed.

“For insomnia use, most knowledgeable internists prescribe many of these medications because they are more efficient and less problematic than drug indicated for insomnia, such as Lunesta and Sonesta, which can have addiction counter-indications,” declared an MD from the Langone Medical Center in New York.

Furthermore, there is evidence of doctors using antidepressants to treat chronic pain even though they were not designed for pain management.

The authors of the study did take into consideration the fact that the majority of doctors are using antidepressants efficiently, but they also point out the fact that this practice goes “by ear”, in the sense that there are no clinical trials that attest the efficiency of antidepressants in the treatment of other disorders besides depression.

This “word-of-mouth” kind of practice can prove to be dangerous to patients seeing as the doctors that are prescribing depression medication for chronic pain or insomnia are basing their opinion on the results they, or their peers, had with a small sample of patients.

The FDA needs scientific proof that the medication is efficient in the treatment of other conditions. Until then, physicians are advised to prescribe drugs according to each specific illness.

Image source: Torange