Psychiatric drugs causing weight gain

Full story: Canada.com, Canada

Now you don’t even have to be hearing voices. If you have intense moods, you might be put on an antipsychotic now.” According to prescription drug tracking ...

Harvard University psychologist Paula Caplan warns of a vicious cycle, where patients who experience weight gain after taking psychotropic drugs are reluctant to discontinue their use.
“If they gain weight, they think ‘I can avoid fast foods, or I can take smaller portion sizes or I can exercise more.’ But to think, ‘go off my medication that I believe is responsible for my being able to function, is too scary.’”

In a recent article in the magazine New Scientist, Caplan says new revelations that some antidepressants are virtually no better than a placebo for all but the most severe cases of depression “make the potential scale of the side effects more worrying than ever.”
She believes the widespread use of psychiatric medications among adults and children is making the obesity epidemic worse.

Writing in New Scientist, Caplan says obesity among teens and younger children has risen over the past 10 to 15 years with a five-fold increase in prescriptions of anti-psychotic drugs to those age groups, and that “children taking these drugs are even more likely to gain weight than adults are.”