Michael Joyce is a writer-producer with HealthNewsReview.org and tweets as @mlmjoyce
Hard to tell if these headlines are using fear-mongering as clickbait, or simply riding the latest wave of stories reporting on the escalating suicide rates in the U.S.:
Millions are taking drugs, including birth control, that increase the risk of suicide (Quartz)
Study: Adults Use Medications That Can Lead to Depression and Suicide (US News & World Report)
Regardless, they’re misguided, misleading, and not supported by a study published earlier this week in JAMA . Here’s why:
This study looked at prescription drugs that list depression and suicidal thinking as side effects, to see if their use was, indeed, associated with more depressive symptoms.
It could only suggest associations, and the key findings of the study are already well known to many healthcare providers:
This latter point is key and was highlighted as a “take-home message” by the lead author in this news release.
Polypharmacy can lead to depressive symptoms … patients and health care providers need to be aware of the risk of depression that comes with all kinds of common prescription drugs, many of which are available over-the-counter … many may be surprised to learn that their medications — despite having nothing to do with mood or anxiety or any other condition normally associated with depression — can increase their risk of experiencing depressive symptoms.
That’s useful information that IS supported by the study, and I was glad to see it included in the reporting by Reuters, NPR, and even Quartz (despite their awful headline).
This is a question that’s rarely posed in news coverage of research on mood disorders. Reporting on this study was no exception. Not a single article I came across challenged the questionnaire used in this study: the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9).
Here is that questionnaire:
To qualify as depressed in this study a score of 10 or more was needed. That’s right on the cusp of mild-to-moderate depression.
But there are some important things to bear in mind.
First, this is self-reported by patients. And that’s notoriously difficult to replicate. Furthermore, a recent study suggests that psychiatric studies which rely upon such questionnaires tend to OVERestimate the prevalence; most likely because the questionnaires set a very low (ie. overinclusive) bar, and patients have difficulty recalling the duration and severity of their symptoms.
Second, the tool is designed to screen for depression, NOT diagnose it. (A positive result is intended to flag people who require follow-up from a clinician to confirm the diagnosis.) And it’s certainly not designed to predict (or diagnose) the potential for suicide. So headlines like the one featured in Quartz are hyperbolic to say the least.
Finally, the questionnaire was designed in the late 90s with a grant from Pfizer which, at the time, was marketing one of the best-selling anti-depressants in history: sertraline (Zoloft®). Ask yourself: would they benefit more from setting a low or high bar for depression?
All this irks Allen Frances, MD, a former chairman of psychiatry at Duke University, who also chaired the task force charged with revising the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) – the standardized criteria used by many mental health care providers in making diagnoses.
“The uncritical use of these self-report questionnaires is responsible for much of the inaccurate diagnosis of mental disorders that’s so ubiquitous in clinical practice and epidemiological studies. Self-reports are inherently biased to exaggerate rates of disorder because they can’t accurately assess the severity, duration, and clinical significance of symptoms. They can only serve as screeners. Careful clinical evaluation is still needed; it’s an imperfect, but necessary check, on the over-diagnosis caused by these questionnaires.”
Many reporters made it clear that this study could not establish cause and effect. And some even included the pragmatic take-home message about polypharmacy (ie. taking multiple drugs concurrently) stressed by the lead author. That’s an important service to readers.
But most outlets did not show the same care with their headlines, which abandoned all nuance in favor of high impact framing. For example USA Today’s take — “One-third of adults in US taking drugs that may cause depression, study finds” — did not include any cautions or caveats about the study or its conclusions.
Their coverage (along with that of many other outlets) highlights an important weakness that is widespread in reporting on mental illness, and one we’d all benefit from addressing. That is, let’s show our readers how various mental illnesses are defined in the studies we’re covering. What are the criteria? How are they measured? And what are their limitations?
That so many of us are interested in stories about depression and suicide is completely understandable. That so many journalists too frequently overlook how researchers define depression is completely avoidable.
Comments (1)
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Paul Scott
June 14, 2018 at 2:37 pmI don’t doubt that some medications make some users suicidal independent of underlying mental illness, and that this is clearly the case when the signal emerges in controlled trials. Personally, I wonder why the articles you reference are attributing this risk to depression, when iatrogenic suicidality is widely believed to be akathisia.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like