More than one-third of American adults may be using prescription medications that can potentially cause depression or increase the risk of suicide, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Some birth control pills, heart and blood pressure medications, proton-pump inhibitors, antacids, and painkillers were among the more than 200 commonly used prescription drugs that researchers said have depression or suicide listed as a potential side effect.

The researchers, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, looked at how more than 26,000 people from 2005 to 2014 used medications.

Because of how widely used some of these medications are, doctors and health care providers may be unaware of any increased risk of depression or suicide, even though they are known side effects, the researchers said.

Approximately 15% of adults who used three or more of these medications at the same time said they experienced depression while taking them; only 5% said they experienced depression among those not using any of the drugs.

 

 

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