by draimee
Should You Stop Your Antidepressants?
Jul 28 2010 in Dr. Aimee, Fertility in the News, Trying to Conceive by draimee
A recently published  study has shown that pregnant women who take antidepressants have a 68% increased risk of miscarriage compared with those who do not take the medications.
Many women struggling to conceive have depression and take antidepressants so I’m glad that this study has come out and is contributing to both depression and miscarriage research. I don’t think you should stop your anti-depressants because of this study.
This study was designed in a way that you can not conclude that antidepressants cause miscarriage. You should also know that the investigators relied on pharmacy records as a way of deciding which pregnant women took antidepressants. We all know that just because you fill a prescription doesn’t mean you took the medication.
The other thing is that the study included women over 40. They included women up to age 45. We know that women over 40 have an increased risk of miscarriages.
So before you make the decision to stop your antidepressant, have a conversation with your medical doctor.
You can read the full study here.
Carleen said on April 30, 2011
aving been on antidepressants for years, the decision to stay on them or quit while TTC is always at the forefront of my mind. Television commercials frequently remind me of the risks associated with taking any medication during pregnancy, but they cause such extraordinary levels of fear in me. I could just imagine getting pregnant and my child suffering from some birth defect because I continued to take my medication instead of putting my child’s health first. I would never recover from the guilt and self-blame. But since I don’t know when or if I will ever conceive again, I don’t know if I should stop the medication altogether especially since stopping the medication brings about its own issues, specifically relapsing into major depression. But how do you balance the fear and reality of entering that dark place again and the health of a nonexistent child? The risks are there, either way.