Is It Safe to Use Antidepressants?
Though the use of the relatively newer class of antidepressants hasn’t been thoroughly investigated relating to the effects of taking these medications when a woman is pregnant, there have been some preliminary studies done that are pointing towards the dangerous risks to the fetus. Such risks should be brought to the attention not only to expecting mothers, but to general practitioners and most especially to gynecologists and obstetricians.
What are The Risks?
Small studies showed that mothers who took SSRIs when they were pregnant had a higher instance of babies that went into some form of withdrawal which included symptoms of disturbed sleep, tremors, and high pitched crying. The researchers of the studies are said to have found that at least 30-percent of babies whose mothers took SSRIs when the babies were in utero, had neonatal abstinence syndrome symptoms. Of those, 13-percent had extreme symptoms of this particular syndrome.
The dangers seem to increase as the pregnancy progresses. Those babies born to moms who took SSRIs for their entire pregnancy were found to have serious congenital anomalies, and other than these anomalies, they were free of any other serious complications.
Pulmonary Hypertension and Your Baby
The New England Journal of Medicine carried a report by Christina D. Chamber, PhD, MPH, as well as her research colleagues; they discovered that using SSRIs late in the pregnancy, newborns with persistent pulmonary hypertension have been attributed to the medication. This problem only seems to exist at the end of the pregnancy and not in the beginning, and using non-SSRI drugs is not associated with the risk of this serious condition.
If you have been taking antidepressants prior to your pregnancy, you will have to work closely with your prescribing mental health care professional as well as your ob/gyn to ensure the best methods to care for yourself without harming the fetus. You can find out more about the risks versus the benefits of taking antidepressants at this site.
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