Antidepressants may protect the brain in early psychosis

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Increasing antidepressant dose was associated with larger volume of the pallidum and the putamen, and larger surface of the left inferior temporal gyrus. In a pilot subsample of separately studied subjects of known genomic risk loci, we found that in the right postcentral gyrus, the left paracentral lobule and the precentral gyrus antidepressant dose-associated surface increase depended on polygenic schizophrenia-related-risk score.

As the reported regions are linked to the symptoms of psychosis, our findings reflect the possible beneficial effects of antidepressant treatment on an emerging psychosis.

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Is schizophrenia your first diagnosis?
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This is true. I wish I knew sooner.

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yeah im pretty sure psychosis roasted my brain pretty good

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My first and second pdoc always said antidepressants would speed me up and cause psychosis. What class of antidepressants are they talking about?

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That explains a lot, lol. At least in my case.

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Antidepressants made me much worse when I started getting psychotic. And the one I took before that did nothing at all.

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we were unable to differentiate groups based on antidepressant types.

They didn’t look at what different types were used, the sample size would have been to small to be meaningful. But they propose more detail in future studies.

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oh thanks for putting that in laymens terms…

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The full study is at

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44903-y#Tab2

It’s not a huge study, but it says it’s the first of its kind to combine imaging and genetic risk scores to measure the effects of antidepressants on brain structures in early psychosis. I don’t think they looked at symptoms.

They did say that antidepressants didn’t appear to have a structural effect on the brain in affective psychosis. Not saying they didn’t have any effect, just that whatever effect it was wasn’t seen on MRI.

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I have psychosis with and without affective symptoms, but without mania… wonder where that places me. Antidepressants were a really bad idea in my case, though.

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Hopefully they can figure out some way to determine that beforehand, since people’s lives get messed up.

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Very interesting study, good to know these meds help with sz as well. Its just a shame the sample size was only 142 participants, not counting the controls. Seems well thought out and executed.

I wasnt aware that SSRI/SNRIs increase brain volume and surface area in parts, Ive always wondered how they translate to better functioning, especially when we usually see results measures in subjective terms like the PSRS scores that people fill out.

Hopefully this study gets replicated with a larger sample size and duration sometime, Id love to know long term effects and maybe see the antidepressants separated in terms of effectiveness instead of setting dosage equivalents to fluoxetine

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Yo @zwolfgang you should post that track on here its really sick man haha

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Thanks man thats the plan! Just gotta eq some stuff

If you wanna keep working on your track as well Im totally down I was actually really feeling it I think it just needs more verses and some drums

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