According to Our World in Data and prescribing data across Europe, 108 people of every 1,000 take an antidepressant in the UK. That makes the country’s prescribing rates for SSRIs and SNRIs the sixth highest worldwide—double that of France (54/1,000) and substantially higher than Germany (at 62/1,000).

In the same data, the United States places just ahead of the UK at fifth from the top, with 110 people in every 1,000 taking an antidepressant. Both countries are behind only Australia (122/1,000), Canada (130/1,000), Portugal (139/1,000), and Iceland (161/1,000), the world’s highest users of antidepressants.

Earlier this month, a group of 27 medical professionals, researchers, patient representatives, and politicians decided to act on the data, calling for the UK government to approve guidance that would reduce and, ultimately, reverse the rate of antidepressant prescribing.

Over the past decade, the group explains in an open letter in the British Medical Journal, antidepressant prescriptions have “almost doubled in England, rising from 47.3 million in 2011 to 85.6 million in 2022-23. Over 8.6 million adults in England are now prescribed them annually (nearly 20% of adults), with prescriptions set to rise over the next decade.” Comparable rates and trends are prevalent in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

In addition to the drugs’ common adverse effects—weight gain, sexual dysfunction, bleeding, and falls—the authors argue that “rising antidepressant prescribing is not associated with an improvement in mental health outcomes at the population level, which, according to some measures, have worsened as antidepressant prescribing has risen.”

Drawing on well-examined studies and meta-analyses, the group points to further reasons for the overprescribing, including that the average length of time on the drugs “doubled between the mid-2000s and 2017, with around half of patients now classed as long-term users.” In the United States over similar years, the data on length of treatment are worse. According to the CDC, two-thirds of U.S. patients between 2011 and 2014 had taken antidepressants for more than two years, and one-quarter for longer than 10 years.

When widely occurring withdrawal effects from antidepressants are factored in, the group of 27 argues, the evidence-base skews negative:

The authors outline several less-expensive alternatives to antidepressant........

© Psychology Today