Danish study finds teens using the pill have an 80 per cent higher chance of becoming depressed
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
The B.C. Catholic
Caption: “Women who are prescribed hormonal contraception should be informed about these potential side effects,” says Danish gynecologist Ojvind Lidegaard, surprised with the results of a recent study in his country. Chris and Kate Knorr / Design Pics.
The newly published results of a study in Denmark are showing what some women have already suspected: there’s a link between contraception use and depression.
Ojvind Lidegaard, a gynecologist in Copenhagen, tracked more than 1 million Danish women from 2000-2013.
“We followed women from the first day they began to take hormonal contraception, and then we assessed how many of these previously healthy women either developed a depression diagnosis or got a prescription of antidepressants,” he told CBC radio.
“What we saw was that within six months of initiating the use of hormonal contraception, the depression rate was increased by 40 per cent overall and among teenagers by 80 per cent.”
Lidegaard was surprised that the findings were so high, especially among teens.
The survey differentiated between different types of contraceptives; while the risk of depression rose 40-80 per cent after using oral contraception, other methods like IUDs were at even higher risk.
“Women who are prescribed hormonal contraception should be informed about these potential side effects so that if they get depressed, they know that it could be a consequence of their hormonal contraception use,” he said.
“I will not go out and say that nobody should take hormonal contraception in the future, because it is still a minority who develop depression with hormonal contraceptive use.”
He added that doctors should be aware of the findings and be sure to warn women about all potential side effects.
They should “take a history from each woman before they prescribe a hormonal contraception, getting information about previous depression or current depression, so that women who are already depressed are not prescribed products which could worsen their depression.”
Teenage girls are more than twice as likely as teenage boys to get depression; the overall rate of teen depression in the U.S. is 10-20 per cent.
The new study came as no surprise to Natalie Sonnen, director of LifeCanada and a natural family planning practitioner.
“We’ve been warning for a long time that there are a lot of side effects to birth control, and these things need to be taken very seriously,” she told The B.C. Catholic.
The pill has more side effects than just depression, she added. “It puts the woman’s body in an artificial pregnancy” and suppresses the “natural cascade of hormones.” Women on the pill can feel bloated, irritable, have mood swings, and experience other pregnancy-like symptoms.
The pill may also cause blood clots, and Sonnen pointed out there have even been cases, though rare, of teenage women who have died of blood clots while on the pill.
Sonnen, who teaches natural birth control methods, said one in four women at her presentations come because they want to drop the artificial stuff.
“It’s definitely one of the main reasons that women switch to natural family planning,” she said.
Even when women are ready to become moms, “we often find that women coming off the birth control pill will have problems for a good six months, and some never get their fertility back.”
Lidegaard’s study admits more research is needed to get the full picture about the connection between contraception and depression.
