A flagship “antidepressant” SSRI drug worsens depression and is ineffective for anxiety
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It is hard to get more damning verdict than the study below. Namely, one of the most widely-prescribed drugs of the SSRI class – prescribed for both depression and anxiety – worsened depression and seems to have had a null effect on anxiety. The drug in question is escitalopram (trade name Lexapro), but since it is considered pharmacologically equivalent to other drugs of the same class, I don’t see a reason why the findings of the study below would not extend to the entire class of SSRI drugs (provided the primary mechanism of action is SSRI). I think at this point, the evidence against SSRI drugs is damning enough and they should promptly withdrawn from the market.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2025.120682
“…Table 1: At time two (controlling for baseline) there was no group*drug interaction in any symptom measures, but ANX participants had greater GAD-7 scores across the drug arms (F = 7.7, p = 0.006), and PHQ-9 scores were greater post-escitalopram compared to post-placebo across both groups (F = 4.1, p = 0.046; for more detail, see Supplementary Results).”
Short-term SSRI use alters brain connectivity in anxious individuals in unexpected ways
“…Unexpectedly, the results showed that anxiety symptoms did not improve for participants receiving escitalopram; instead, anxiety levels remained consistently higher in the anxious group compared to healthy controls regardless of the treatment they received. Furthermore, depression symptoms were higher across all participants (both with and without anxiety) who received escitalopram compared to those who received the placebo. As the study authors expected, after escitalopram treatment, participants with anxiety disorders showed changes in the connectivity between the amygdala region and the dorsomedial cortex in both brain hemispheres compared to healthy controls. However, the change was in the opposite direction compared to what the study authors expected—the connectivity increased, while the study authors expected a decrease. “These findings suggest that our simple hypothesis of SSRIs inducing a reduction in amygdala-dorsomedial cortex connectivity is incorrect, and the associated brain connectivity may instead increase in the initial weeks of drug administration,” the study authors concluded.”
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