Antidepressants May Change Your Personality

“Antidepressants May Change Your Personality” was the lead story of the recent daily health news update from healthfinder.gov, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ service to provide current health info to the public. My initial reaction was that this isn’t news. (I’m not making any value judgments about whether this is good or bad, by the way.)

The story cites the research of Tony Tang, an adjunct professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, which found that taking antidepressants may not only help alleviate depression, but could also make you more extraverted and less neurotic. The study, “Personality Change During Depression Treatment: A Placebo-Controlled Trial,” featured in the December 2009 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, posits that extraversion—often associated with positive emotions—is believed to help protect from depression, while neuroticism—the tendency to experience negative emotions and emotional instability—is thought to contribute to depression.

The study revives some of the work by Peter D. Kramer (author of Listening to Prozac and Against Depression) following the introduction of Prozac (though the premise is certainly extended to all types of antidepressants) about social questions surrounding the benefits and problems of “norming” one’s personality in the name of treatment. Though this question may seem a bit passé, it is a topic that will certainly get more traction as cosmetic neurology and the concept of “normal” wends its way through the mental health field.

For more on this topic, check out:

Is Cosmetic Neurology the Behavioral Health Business of the Future? The Controversy Over Drugs That Build “Mental Muscle”