Antidepressants may reduce anxiety more than depressive symptoms

One of the most common antidepressants, sertraline, leads to an early reduction in anxiety symptoms, commonly found in depression, several weeks before any improvement in depressive symptoms, a UCL-led clinical trial has found. Published in The Lancet Psychiatry and funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), this is the largest-ever placebo-controlled trial of an antidepressant, which has not been funded by the pharmaceutical industry. By involving a wide range of patients including people with mild to moderate symptoms, the researchers surveyed a much wider group of people than most previous clinical trial samples. Sertraline did not appear to improve depressive symptoms, which include low mood, loss of pleasure and poor concentration, within six weeks. However, there was weak evidence that sertraline reduced depressive symptoms by 12 weeks. Participants who took sertraline were twice as likely as those who took a placebo to say their mental health had improved overall. This is an important measure of improvement, from the patient's perspective, and can be used to gauge clinically meaningful treatment effects.