Women, teens who take the pill have raised depression risk: study

Women taking oral contraceptive pills may have an increased risk of depression — especially shortly after starting on the pill.

That’s one of the findings from a large study of more than 264,000 women, which also finds that teenage girls are at the highest risk.

In fact, women who were teenagers when they began to use birth control pills had a 130% higher rate of depression.

The increased rate among adult users was 92%, according to the study authors.

“The powerful influence of contraceptive pills on teenagers can be ascribed to the hormonal changes caused by puberty,” Therese Johansson, of the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University in Sweden, said in a news release.

“As women in that age group have already experienced substantial hormonal changes, they can be more receptive not only to hormonal changes but also to other life experiences,” Johansson added.

This new study, published in Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, adds to previous research that found a link between oral contraceptive use and depression.

A 2016 report in JAMA Psychiatry revealed that the use of hormonal contraceptives was often linked to a subsequent use of prescription antidepressants or a diagnosis of depression.

And in 2019, another study found that 16-year-old girls taking oral contraceptives reported more crying, sleep irregularities and eating problems than teenage girls of the same age who didn’t use oral contraceptives.

The latest study used data from the UK Biobank, a biomedical database with genetic and health information from more than half a million participants across the UK.

The researchers studied combination contraceptive pills, which contain progestogen, a compound resembling the hormone progesterone, and estrogen. 

The study revealed that the increase in rates of depression declined when women continued using contraceptive pills after the first two years.

But teenage users of contraceptive pills still had an increased rate of depression even after they stopped using the pill. That effect was not seen in adult users of the pill.

Despite these risks, the study authors noted that most women use hormonal contraceptives with few if any adverse side effects.

“It is important to emphasize that most women tolerate external hormones well, without experiencing negative effects on their mood, so combined contraceptive pills are an excellent option for many women,” Johansson said.

“Contraceptive pills enable women to avoid unplanned pregnancies and they can also prevent illnesses that affect women, including ovarian cancer and uterine cancer,” she added.

“Although contraception has many advantages for women, both medical practitioners and patients should be informed about the side effects identified in this and previous research.”