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by hda111 1483 days ago
What medications cause anxiety and depression?
4 comments

Medications for anxiety and depression can cause brain fog and fatigue.
In the past it's been anything from acne medications to birth control and even anti-depressants. Depression isn't an unusual side-effect at all.
Acutane? I remember having a conversation with my doctor as a teenager about it, and even he wasn't sure about cause and effect.

Does the medication cause depression? Or was the person already depressed due to having acne so bad it needed medical treatment? Either direction seems reasonable to me.

That said, he was careful to who he handed it out to, and we decided against it.

Accutane can cause severe depression and suicidal thoughts, but not for everyone. It should definitely be a near-last resort when dealing with severe or cystic acne.

That being said, the before/after pictures that get posted in the accutane subreddit are mind blowing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Accutane/comments/hslnet/_/

yeah the big deal at the time was the 15 year old that tried to pull a mini 9/11, his mom sued the manufacturer of Acutane (later dropped) and it spooked a bunch of parents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Tampa_Cessna_172_crash?wp...

Christ, you'd think that people might get the message that there's something deeply wrong when you get a feeling like that.

It's a testament to the power of post-structuralism or something.

> there's something deeply wrong when you get a feeling like that

Everyone knows that feeling depressed is deeply wrong.

Medications that can cause depression are often prescribed for serious illnesses, like debilitating mental illness. They don't always cause depression, and the small risk of temporary, treatable depression is determined by the doctor and patient to exceed the risk of the condition that's being treated.

Not exactly a medication but alcohol for one.

But many other drugs can cause these sorts of symptoms too including anti-depressants paradoxically.

Do you mean a treatment for anxiety and depression or a cause?

“Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.” -Homer Simpson

Alcohol can definitely cause anxiety, and make anxiety worse.

I will also suggest alcohol can trigger depression - but that is a claim that is ripe for debate and not well accepted.

Alcohol can also "treat" (in the sense of suppressing symptoms) anxiety and depression, thus leading to a downward spiral since it tends to make these things worse, thus you get into the cycle of "Oh I'm feeling anxious, better have a beer - oh, now my anxiety is worse now that I have sobered up, better have more..."

Alcohol objectively causes physiological CNS depression. Whether or not it necessarily causes the mood of depression or 'major depressive disorder' as diagnosed by clinical psychologists or psychiatrists is another matter.
Birth control among many other medications.