LATELY, I have witnessed an alarming trend of over-prescription of anti-depressant medications by general practitioners in the country. Many doctors have been prescribing not only anti-depressants, but also sleep medications, anxiolytics, as the doctors call it, to majority of patients who present to their clinics with vague description of their symptoms.

It is worth mentioning that majority of the bodily symptoms that the patients experience are psychosomatic in nature, which means these symptoms do not have any physical cause and the investigations do not reveal any abnormalities.

Instead of putting such patients on anti-depressants and a whole lot of other drugs blindly, general practitioners should refer them to a psychiatrist which is the ethical and the right thing to do.

Most commonly prescribed anti-depressants belong to class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and these should be prescribed carefully while taking into account the patient’s age, gender, family history and other co-morbidities, if any.

Also, these anti-depressants cause some serious side-effects and it is the responsibility of the doctor to educate about the potential side-effects of each anti-depressant as well as anxiolytics, and prescribe these drugs only if the other treatment options, like cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness, relaxation exercises, and so on, have been utilised and failed to bring about any improvement.

Likewise, abruptly stopping the use of anti-depressants should be discouraged, as it does serious harm to the body.

Dr Muhammad Usman Amjad
Dera Ghazi Khan

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2022