A new study published in Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry finds that antidepressant use is linked to type 2 diabetes (T2D). Beyond a simple link, the methods used in the current work point towards antidepressants as a cause of increased risk of T2D in people diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD). The current research, led by Ancha Baranova of George Mason University and Dongming Liu of Nanjing University, found a weaker link between genetic components of MDD and T2D. However, the authors note that “the elevated T2D risk in MDD patients is chiefly caused by antidepressant use.”
T2D is linked to a number of serious health problems including blindness, kidney disease, nerve damage, heart disease, and premature death. The causal link found in the current work between antidepressant use and T2D undermines the narrative of antidepressants as a generally safe option for the treatment of psychological distress. The authors write:
“We found that the use of antidepressants has a higher causal association with T2D than MDD itself, and ascertained antidepressant use as an independent risk factor for T2D. Surprisingly, we also show that MDD did not exert an independent causal effect on T2D, suggesting that the influence of MDD on T2D is mainly due to the mediating effects of antidepressants.”
These findings challenge the prevailing assumption that depression itself contributes to diabetes risk and instead highlight the role of psychiatric medications in shaping long-term metabolic health. Given that diabetes is associated with severe complications—including heart disease, kidney failure, and premature death—the study raises concerns about the widespread use of antidepressants and their long-term consequences.
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Actually I see clear proof that the authors interpretation of the data is spurious and speculative, because they have not considered the blindingly obvious and irrefutable fact that social factors could produce both antidepressant compliance AND type 2 diabetes seperately, i.e. they could both be rooted in a deeper cause, and an obvious one jumps out to me: going to a psychiatrist and getting prescribed and then chronically taking antidepressants is are not divisible or isolable facts, and therefore chronic antidepressant patients are a selective and therefore unrepresentative sample. To me their tendency to believe the falsehoods of psychiatry and to be compliant with psychiatric advice and to take the pills doing what society says you should do is quite possibly indicative of a higher then representative degree of social conditioning and social conformity, whereas another cohort, for example, could instead become an addict or alcoholic as a response, or another may fall pray to hate fuelled politics or the like, so the antidepressant population is not representative of the population as a whole but is a relatively socially conditioned and conformist cohort. It is undoubtable that being heavily socially conditioned and conformist is more stressful, and that physiological and psychological stress increases are both factors causing depression and anxiety, but it is also known that chronic stress exacerbates diabetes, with known mechanisms behind this association – because the increased cortisol levels produced by stress causes a heightening of blood glucose which if it’s a transient stress can return to normal, but if it’s a chronic stress perturbs blood sugar levels and ordinary insulin function on a chronic basis. This causes an increase in diabetes, and obesity, particularly abdominal obesity, and the wild swings in blood sugar also increase carbohydrate craving. Obesity and binge eating behaviours and stress are other factor that independently increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and depression, and the more heavily socially conditioned you are and the more conformist you are the more likely you are to seek help from a psychiatrist and also the more likely you are to believe what they say and be compliant with your medication. Now please see this. Everything I say here is I feel beyond dispute if you look into the facts which isn’t too difficult and one hopes you know how (PubMed, google scholar etc), so the authors are manifestly and indisputably to me altogether rash to conclude that antidepressants independently cause elevated type 2 diabetes risk. Of course this is possible, but unless you’ve identified a known biochemical and/or hormonal mechanism then to claim such a link is actually speculation, not science, and the author of this article is also culpable for clearly being in no way subtle enough in their enquiries to pick this out. Now, if it is the case that social factors produce the increased compliance to antidepressants and also produce the increased risk of type 2 diabetes separately, i.e. if both the type 2 diabetes and the pill taking both are separately caused by something deeper, then see how dangerous and damaging is not just research like this but also the weaknesses of the socially conditioned intellects that made the research and that posted it here on MIA. And furthermore it is just an accumulation of negating bullet points for the critic of psychiatry – and part of a campaign armoury for the propaganda army that you want critics of psychiatry to become, propaganda or the critique of psychiatry, but psychiatry is not the problem, but it’s symptom, and articles like this are another symptom. The problem is the social conditioning and ruination of every part of Mother Nature, not least of all our own bodies and brains.
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The fact that diabetes and depression and seeking help for it and getting prescribed antidepressants are all caused by something deeper is an easy fact to prove, because diabetes, depression and seeking help for it and getting prescribed pills does not happen in nature, which is what we were before social history started to accumulate and then dominate and condition our lives and brains. Think of the absolutely ENORMOUS amount of life, energy, intelligence, labour and resources and an almost infinite amount of social and environmental suffering are going into a social system entirely designed around the interests of making financial profit or where government is concerned economic efficiency of the state, and consider what an absolutely enormous and catastrophic waste of life, energy, intelligence, labour and resources and pain and suffering this would be if the goal of making financial profit and running a cheap state were not, in fact, in the service of life at all and was instead leading to the universal degradation of life – that’s in the total devastation of Mother Earth, the total denaturing and disempowerment of the human subject, the total destruction of human relationships or human connection, and we see clear proof that these aims of our society have nothing to do with happiness or human betterment – the proof is in the pudding. Think of the absolutely enormous amount of energy and resources going into a system that blights our minds, hearts, brains and lives with infinite problems few of which we have any power over at all. Do you see this? You will know if you see this by whether or not it radicalizes you today. If you see this you can no longer contribute to the total system that’s destroyed everything worth living for on Earth today, including each of us and you. If you don’t think you have been destroyed this is proof you’ve been destroyed, because if you weren’t you would be destroyed by what has happened to humanity and the Earth. But that is the good kind of destruction to be had, and is evidence that sorrow is the truth today.
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And rather then divide humanity into the mentally ill and mentally healthy, could we not all agree that both of these are bogus, divisive, socially conditioned concepts which have essentially been socially governed for the last century by psychiatry and to a lesser and more marginal extent Western philosophy and psychology, and these concepts falsify reality to such an extent that the real becomes an illusion, so we actually believe people are ‘mentally ill’ rather then are socially conceived as mentally ill, and we may fear to meet someone we hear was mentally ill and see them through that fear, so the socially invented concept becomes the illusion, so the illusion becomes the real. Perhaps instead we should see that everyone expresses symptoms of a common malady which I’ll express in a way I don’t usually, and that is to define the malady as the consequences of human incompleteness, the incompleteness which is both our suffering, and the cause of all our vein and destructive strivings. After all, it’s only the consequences of our incompleteness as human beings that is devastating the whole world and each of us, and these consequences include what we call both mental health and illness in the Western world, for with ‘mental health’ we engage in destructive and confused action, and when we are ‘mentally ill’ life becomes a burden unto its self. This human incompleteness is our incompleteness in understanding, in fulfilment, and in relationships, and consequently in our love of life. You can only love what is true, because only what is true actually is, but we give ourselves instead to the pursuit of what we lack, and lack isn’t something that actually is, so we end up squandering our spiritual inheritance on that which is not, on whims and hopes. This is perfectly normal and effects every human being on the Earth but it is the source of all their unhappiness and all human unhappiness past, present and future. Completeness of understanding convicts and ends the incompleteness of thought, but not everything in you will easily show itself and therefore completeness is ever elusive, for me as much as for you. But that which is elusive in me is not me, and that which is elusive in you is not you. It is elusive because it cannot accept the truth, which means it can’t accept you, because you are the truth, the fact, the actual, and only judgement and theory obscures that truth. And to the person that understands this it’s almost impossible to relate to those who do not, and by relate I mean connect. I’m afraid I can’t read my emails or personal messages much because I can’t communicate with people who believe and judge and therefore invent reality instead of seeking to uncover and understand reality, which is the only true basis for healthy lives, a healthy mind, healthy discussion and healthy relationships. And for me healthy relationships are not personal but universal in character, because understanding relates the part to the whole, making it universal. Belief destroys clarity and sanity and judgement destroys connection. Both are inimical to truth UNLESS AND UNTIL they are observed and understood for what they are. And I include theories and conclusions here which are mere intellectual beliefs rather then beliefs related to desire, emotion and the drive for security. Your brain can’t understand how it could possibly do without beliefs, theories, conclusions, opinions and so forth, which is actually a very strange thing if you consider that even a frog or a fly can consciously exist and live without any such thing. Why can’t we? There is only one answer. Because we’re socially conditioned, and thought is our social conditioning in action. The life it runs on is the life of the human animal, but it is not the human animal at all, and neither is it of the consciousness. It’s of only society, and as you see everything that society touches today it destroys, including me and you.
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Here’s my experience with antidepressants and neuroleptics: massive weight gain of 90+ lbs. within 3 months WITHOUT OVEREATING.
This ended up raising my blood sugar to the point it alarmed my GP. He didn’t say much, but I had the feeling he knew the “meds” were causing it. Thankfully, my weight and blood sugar eventually got back to normal, but only after I stopped the offending “medications”.
Any pharmaceutical known to significantly affects the body’s metabolism (body weight, blood pressure, blood sugar levels) ought to be considered VERY CAREFULLY, something that unfortunately most doctors aren’t trained to do especially when “treating” with psychiatric drugs, which I believe are now deregulating people’s metabolism on a massive scale that has yet to be fully realized.
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I had a client in foster care (we were her CASA advocates) who was diagnosed with diabetes. Here CASA volunteer got them to discontinue her Seroquel (antipsychotic). Next visit, her diabetes was gone. Thank God for the CASA!
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Thank God for CASA is right.
I doubt most GP’s who treat foster kids know enough to put two and two together like the CASA volunteer did – much less care enough to take the kids off the so-called “meds”.
Sometimes I almost think the overprescription of psych drugs are more likely to cause the end of human civilization than nuclear war.
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Real trouble comes when doctors play fast and loose with psychiatric pharmaceuticals as these can and often do adversely affect people’s metabolism in ways that aren’t easily remedied.
Illness such as diabetes – caused BY psychiatric “meds” – is the elephant in the room that’s rarely addressed in medical practice.
Which means what? That many adverse metabolic conditions – massive weight gain, high blood sugar, high blood pressure – all precursors to debilitating illness like diabetes – are fast becoming major causes of physical disability in the United States.
Too few doctors realize this – and even fewer take this seriously if they do.
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Most doctors seem to have forgotten that a body’s metabolism (and mind) is driven primarily by the endocrine system (hormones) – the very system that most psychiatric drugs can seriously dysregulate, and most likely in ways that have yet to manifest.
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Antidepressants (psychiatric drugs) cause ‘Diabetes, Tardive Dyskinesia (TD)’ and many other physical and mental health problems that we cannot even think of right now.. Possibly.. All these health problems may indicate that people also have (or may have) unidentified (undetectable) ‘chemical brain damage’. Also… Diabetes, TD and other physical and mental health problems that occur also give us a beautiful and meaningful idea that psychiatric medications may have damaged people’s ‘DNA and cell structures’.
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Psychiatric drugs likely damage people’s ‘DNA and cell structures’. And as a result, physical health problems such as ‘diabetes, TD’ emerge. It also ‘damages brain chemistry (brain damage). And presumably because of this ‘brain chemistry damage’, it is also seen to lead to ‘mental health problems’. (The emergence of non-existent natural psychological problems; The worsening of existing psychological problems; All natural psychological problems becoming permanent..)
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Obvious changes in facial shapes..
1) The facial changes that occur in Tardive Dyskinesia were already known. It’s (TD) a kind of ‘facial paralysis’ kind of like thing.. It is said that some neurological drugs, along with psychiatric drugs, cause this. However, for some reason, the TD that occurs in people using psychiatric medications is blamed on other causes.
They often blame the patients. ‘You used medicine irregularly, that’s why it happened!’ Or.. ‘Your constitution is prone to this! / It’s hereditary, if it runs in your family, you may have it too! / It may be due to other reasons!’ like.. So they mean to say; ‘It’s your fault! Psychiatric drugs are innocent! Who told you to ‘Be MAD (/CRAZY) and use psychiatric drugs!’?!’
2) We can see that there are significant changes in the ‘face’ shape of people with physical health problems such as ‘diabetes, TD’ caused by psychiatric medications. For example.. We notice that patients (most, if not all) who develop ‘diabetes’ due to psychiatric medications also have a ‘face shape’ that we call ‘moon face’. The ‘facial shape changes’ caused by psychiatric drugs in humans are often quite obvious. And this could be a significant sign of ‘diabetes’.
3) There is also a situation that very few people know about… Probably.. We notice that some people who use psychiatric medication have facial features similar to the ‘down syndrome’ type. (This is what I noticed…) I have read information that psychiatric medications ’cause babies to be born with Down syndrome.’
But other than that… I have noticed that after using psychiatric medications, especially for long periods (months and/or years), some people develop facial features that are similar to a type of ‘down syndrome’ that gradually become apparent. (These are the characteristics I see especially in some patients who come to hospital psychiatry outpatient clinics. Probably… These features may also be in mental hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, mentally disabled care homes, nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. You can observe it too.. Observe patients coming to outpatient clinics (i.e. examinations). You can see obvious changes in facial features. It needs to be investigated..)
Probably.. This condition may be confused with diabetes because it resembles the ‘moon-faced’ shape of people with diabetes. I would guess that this is (/could be) very different. People with a ‘Down Syndrome’ type of face shape may have a worse situation than those with a ‘moon-faced’ type. The reason for this is probably.. We can see psychiatric medications used for long periods (months and/or years) as causing chemical damage to the patients’ DNA and cell structures.
The reason for this is probably.. It may be that psychiatric medications used for long periods (months and/or years) cause chemical damage to patients’ DNA and cell structures. My guess is that psychiatric drugs also appear to cause serious damage to people’s ‘DNA structures and cells’. Of course, I don’t know if there is any scientific data or research in the literature about this. (This may be a bit difficult to prove..) Just as chemical brain damage is difficult to detect, proving that DNA and cell structures have been damaged by psychiatric drugs can be very difficult.
This will probably require honest psychiatrists, other doctors, journalists, writers, politicians and other researchers, etc… Probably.. The psychiatry and pharmaceutical sectors actually know and are aware of these facts..
People who start taking psychiatric medication need to have all kinds of health screenings and records made from the moment they start taking the medication. Actually, this is done. (Sometimes / never done) But it is done in a different way.. Probably.. We see that the psychiatry and pharmaceutical industries process these in a way that ‘will not harm themselves’.
They do not address certain realities (for example, the possible harms of psychiatric medications). They appear to be processing completely ‘deceptive and misleading data’. In fact, this situation also applies to the world of general medicine. In the medical world, the tradition of ‘covering up’ medical errors is incredibly common.
And… In fact, neither the psychiatry nor the medical world has sufficient serious information about ‘mind and mental illnesses’. What they probably did was… In other words… Almost all of the arguments they present as ‘scientific data’ are ‘imaginary fictional’ data consisting of their ‘experiences and observations’.. None of this is serious data about real ‘mind and mental illnesses’. We can say that these data are also imaginary data, just as the ‘criteria for diagnosing and making a diagnosis of mental illnesses’ in the DSM and WHO were produced imaginarily. Isn’t that right?
With my best wishes.. Y.E. (Researcher blog writer (Blogger))
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SSRIs increase homocysteine which is known to cause insulin resistance and diabetes, especially in people who are already at risk for diabetes (like people who have MTHFR mutations).
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