Editorials

Depression, antidepressants, and accidents

Patients with depressive disorders could be more liable to accidents than others for several reasons. These include impaired attention and concentration (often due to preoccupation with morbid or worrying thoughts); anxiety, which usually accompanies depression; irritability; agitation or retardation; fatigue after sleepless nights; and weakness due to insufficient food intake. In addition, depressed patients may take risks with little regard to the consequences, make suicidal gestures or attempts that go wrong, and take alcohol or other substances that impair functioning to relieve distress. In keeping with these considerations are the reductions in performance in tests of cognitive and psychomotor function in depressed patients.¹

If depression causes or contributes to accidents in these ways then therisk of accidents might be expected to fall as the disorder improves in response to treatment with antidepressant drugs (or other treatment). On the other hand, the unwanted effects of antidepressants . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Depression, antidepressants, and accidents

P A M Diamond
BMJ 1995 311: 1570. [Extract] [Full Text]

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• Diamond, P A M (1995). Depression, antidepressants, and accidents. BMJ 311: 1570a-1570 [Full text]