2023-06-26 09:49:43
A new study shows that women who take the contraceptive pill have an increased risk of presenting depressive symptoms, without it being known yet why. But those under 20, and older women who are just starting to take oral contraceptives, need to know about it…and watch their mood.
The birth control pill has long been suspected of affecting the functioning of our brain. Does it increase the risk of depression? For 20 years, researchers have been trying to answer this question, and studies are sometimes contradictory : several have shown a link between taking oral contraception during adolescence and an increased risk of depression, even suicide, while, in adults, other studies suggest on the contrary the absence of an increase in risk, or even its reduction.
A new study, led by Swedish, Danish and Australian researchers, looked at UK Biobank data for the 264,557 women whose contraceptive status was known. In this cohort, 205,860 women reported having taken oral contraception, while 49,645 had never taken it. In the first group, 20,454 reported depression (i.e. 9.94%); in the second, 4,926 (i.e. 8.65%). But it should be noted that this was depression in the clinical sense of the term, having been the subject of a medical diagnosis.
An increased risk of depression
However, as the researchers point out, depressive symptoms do not always attract the attention of clinicians… It is therefore by studying a sub-cohort of 82,232 women who had answered an online questionnaire on mental health that they were able to refine their analysis. Among them, 44,605 said they had felt at least one of the main symptoms of depression.
By cross-checking the data, the researchers were able to establish that depressive symptoms were more reported among women who were taking or had taken an oral contraceptive than among those who had never taken one. Those who had started taking the pill before or at the age of 20 even presented a 130% higher risk, and this throughout their lives, even if they had stopped taking the pill a long time ago. They also observed that women who started taking the pill after the age of 20 also had a increased risk (by 92%) of experiencing depressive symptomsbut only during the first two years after starting treatment…
Read also The post-pill syndrome
Biases that led to an underestimation?
The researchers point out that several biases had to be taken into account in this study: the healthy volunteer bias according to which when we take a drug and it does not work for us, we stop it… A bias that we find almost systematically in studies on the subject. This means that only women who continued to take the pill because they tolerated it well are taken into account in the cohort. The authors mention the specific biases of the “British Biobank”, namely, the fact that the selected population is healthier than the general population of the United Kingdom [et donc que les résultats ne sont pas généralisables] ; the fact that white Europeans are overrepresented there; the fact that there is no information on the type of contraceptive used; the fact that there is no mention of any interruptions in taking the contraceptive.
Read also I stop the birth control pill, what should I expect?
The researchers conclude that taking oral contraception is associated with increased risk of depression in teenage girls (a risk that lasts throughout their lives) and in adults (risk that appears especially in the early stages of treatment and disappears when stopped).
While recalling that many women also live very well being on the pill, the researchers invite all women to be informed of this risk, and thus to monitor the appearance of possible depressive symptoms. They call for further research to elucidate how oral contraception can precipitate depression.
Read also Desire, choice of partner, emotions: what the pill does to your brain
Read also Birth control pills and the brain: the later the better?
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