The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7234 p144
1 February 2003

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Treating depression makes employees feel no better

Research by the Health and Safety Executive has found that medicines prescribed to treat anxiety and depression can cause the same problems at work as the illnesses themselves.

The HSE report, "Effects of prescribed medication on performance in the working population", says that anxiety, depression and their associated treatments affect work performance and that accidents and near misses can be caused by all three. Workers with responsibilities for others, such as teachers, doctors and managers, present a particular risk.

Non-compliance was found to be common because of side effects, the time taken for treatment to start working and because starting treatment made people feel worse than before. Patients found it difficult to distinguish between side effects and the symptoms of depression and anxiety because they are often the same. People were unprepared for the effects of their treatment and thought that they had not been given enough information by doctors or pharmacists.

Patients taking part in focus group discussions for the research reported being changed by their medication from people who could not work because of their illness into people who could not work because they no longer cared. Only four of the 784 people involved in the research reported that taking antianxiety or antidepressant medicines had improved the quality of their work.