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| |  Antidepressant May Improve Personality Traits While Relieving Depressive Symptoms CHICAGO -- December 7, 2009 -- Individuals taking the antidepressant paroxetine may experience changes in their personality separate from alleviation of depressive symptoms, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. Two personality traits, neuroticism and extraversion, have been related to depression risk. Both traits have been linked to the brain’s serotonin system. Tony Z. Tang, PhD, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and colleagues studied the effects of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) paroxetine in a placebo-controlled trial involving 240 adults with major depressive disorder. Participants were randomly assigned to receive paroxetine (n = 120), to undergo cognitive therapy (n = 60), or to receive placebo (n = 60) for 12 months. Personality traits and depressive symptoms were assessed before, during, and after treatment. All participants experienced improvement in depressive symptoms. However, even after controlling for these improvements, individuals taking paroxetine experienced a significantly greater decrease in neuroticism and increase in extraversion than those receiving cognitive therapy or placebo. “Patients taking paroxetine reported 6.8 times as much change on neuroticism and 3.5 times as much change on extraversion as placebo patients matched for depression improvement,” the authors stated. The findings provide evidence against a theory known as the state effect hypothesis, which proposes that any personality changes during SSRI treatment occur only as a result of alleviating depressive symptoms, the authors note. Several alternative explanations could be considered. “One possibility is that the biochemical properties of SSRIs directly produce real personality change,” they state. “Furthermore, because neuroticism is an important risk factor that captures much of the genetic vulnerability for major depressive disorder, change in neuroticism (and in neurobiological factors underlying neuroticism) might have contributed to depression improvement.” SSRIs are widely used to treat depression, but understanding of their mechanisms is limited, the authors conclude; they have also been shown effective in treating anxiety disorders and eating disorders, conditions for which high neuroticism and low extraversion may also be a risk. “Investigating how SSRIs affect neuroticism and extraversion may thus lead toward a more parsimonious understanding of the mechanisms of SSRIs,” the authors conclude. The data set of this study came from a clinical trial supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland. GlaxoSmithKline, Brentford, England, provided medications and placebo pills.
SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry
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