Antidepressant Pills Are Not Advised During Pregnancy

A new study from specialists shows that antidepressant pills are not advised during pregnancy. Future moms who use them face the risk of the baby having health problems. Doctors suggest that the medication could trigger speech disorders for the babies.

The new research was conducted by Finnish scientists. The results of their study are based on a fourteen years observation of mothers and their children. According to the study, pregnant women who are depressed and fight the condition with antidepressant pills increase the chances for their baby to develop language problems.

The findings of the study point out that future moms who use antidepressants pills have thirty-seven percent chances of having a baby with a speech disorder. The percentage was observed with pregnant women who bought the pills at least twice during the nine-months period.

On the other hand, pregnant women who are depressed, but don’t use antidepressant pills, face no such risk, the study highlights. Children whose moms didn’t have to deal with depression were more than sixty percent safe from developing a language-related disorder during their lifetime.

The authors of the study point out that the stage of depression is also important when analyzing the odds of a baby to have speech disorders. Pregnant women with suicidal tendencies are more likely to give birth to a child who will be confronted with language difficulties.

The Finnish research included more that fifty-six thousand cases. Specialists looked into data gathered between 1996 and 2010. They were interested in the mothers’ habits and state of mind during pregnancy, as well as the health status of the baby at birth and during the next years of life.

The specialists divided the information into three categories, namely mothers who were depressed and used pills, mothers who were depressed but didn’t use pills, and, finally, mothers who were not depressed. The latter category stands as the majority, with fifty-five percent of the studied cases. The first category accounts for the twenty-eight percent of the cases, and the second group, the remaining seventeen percent.

The study showed that the kids in the first group had the most chances of developing speech disorders or behavior problems when they got older. More than fifteen thousand children fit the profile in the study led by the Finnish researchers. The authors also noted that the signs started to emerge when the children were about four years old.

Antidepressant pills do not directly affect the unborn babies, as the specialists stress. Their point is that there might be a connection between the pills and the possible disease developed by children. The findings of the study were published in JAMA Psychiatry.

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