Do Antidepressants Shrink Your Brain? No but Depression Does.

Do antidepressants shrink your brain? No, but depression does. This question is based on a viewer comment. I think it’s pretty common for people to believe this. But in actuality, the illness, major depression causes brain cell loss and antidepressants protect you from that brain cell loss. This is where we get the term “pseudodementia.” Depression can have profound effects on your memory and it’s a cumulative effect. The effect is greater with repeated episodes and episodes that go a long time without treatment or resolution.

References:

If you read some of these studies, you’ll notice they use the term “stress” a lot when talking about triggering depression. The “stress” in these studies is not having too much work to do or a demanding schedule, they are talking about stress hormones called glucocorticoids such as cortisol. High levels of these hormones contribute the the cellular changes that cause depression.

Sheline YI et. al., Depression Duration But Not Age Predicts Hippocampal Volume Loss in Medically Healthy Women with Recurrent Major Depression. Journal of Neuroscience. 15 June 1999, 19 (12) 5034-5043

The protein involved in neuron loss
Ota K, Liu R, Voleti B, et al. REDD1 is essential for stress-induced synaptic loss and depressive behavior. Nature Medicine. 2014.

How antidepressants protect against cell loss
Duman RS. Ketamine and rapid-acting antidepressants: a new era in the battle against depression and suicide. F1000Research. 2018;7:F1000 Faculty Rev-659. doi:10.12688/f1000research.14344.1.

Antidepressants increase BDNF
Watanabe K. et. al. Effect of antidepressants on brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) release from platelets in the rats
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2010 Dec 1;34(8):1450-4. doi: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2010.07.036. Epub 2010 Aug 11.

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