Latest news with #neuroplasticity
Forbes
22-05-2025
- Health
- Forbes
AI Anxiety. Are We Witnessing The Decay Of Our Brains?
The digital age promised freedom from tedious tasks, a future where machines would handle the routine, allowing human minds to focus on bigger things. Artificial intelligence, in its growing presence, has delivered on some of that. From crafting eloquent emails to optimizing complex logistics, AI offers immense convenience, a smooth handover of mental effort. Yet, beneath this easy efficiency, a quiet, unsettling worry has begun to stir. Are we, in our quick adoption of artificial cognition, unintentionally seeing our own thinking skills fade? This isn't a sci-fi scenario, but a real question for a generation at a unique point in history. You and I remember a time before ChatGPT, before AI became a constant helper in our intellectual lives. We grew up tackling tough problems, putting information together, and in the process, gradually sharpened our critical thinking skills. We learned to solve challenges with limited digital aid. But for those who were born after the rise of generative AI in November 2022, AI is the norm. This raises important questions about the legacy we are creating for their minds. Neuroscience has long supported the idea that our brains need to be used to stay strong. Our brains aren't fixed; they are active, adaptable structures capable of amazing change, a process known as neuroplasticity. When we do challenging mental tasks – like learning a new language, solving a difficult problem, or even finding our way in an unfamiliar city – our brains build new connections and strengthen existing ones. If we don't give our brains enough mental stimulation, our thinking abilities can decline. Cognitive training studies demonstrate that engaging in mentally demanding activities can improve memory, attention, and problem-solving skills throughout life. On the other hand, environments that lessen the need for active mental engagement can lead to a noticeable drop in brain activity in key areas. If AI consistently gives us answers, solves equations, and even writes our stories, what happens to the brain pathways that once did those jobs? The very convenience AI offers could be stopping our brains from getting the essential "workouts" they need to stay lively and healthy. Beyond the biological, there's a significant mental aspect to our increasing reliance on AI: the possibility of agency decay. Agency refers to our ability to act on our own and make our own choices. It's the feeling of being in control of what we do and what happens as a result, which is a core part of feeling good about ourselves and being effective. Beyond that ability to take action, agency also encompasses the perception of that ability – and the volition to use it. When AI systems increasingly make decisions for us, filter our information, or even create our artistic output, the occasions to activate our agency shrink. Research on learned helplessness, for example, shows how people who feel they have no control over their environment can become less motivated, have trouble thinking, and feel emotional distress. The widespread convenience that comes with AI can accidentally create a similar mental state. If we consistently let AI do the work of problem-solving, careful analysis, or remembering things, we risk losing our perceived ability to do these tasks ourselves. This subtle loss of agency can lead to a growing feeling of powerlessness, a sense that our own mental muscles are wasting away from not being used. This situation is especially important for those of us who grew up before generative AI was everywhere. We are, in essence, the last analog generation. We remember a world where getting information took more effort, where research meant library shelves and putting ideas together, not just typing a question into a chatbot. Young people, growing up with AI as a constant companion, face a distinct form of AI anxiety. Beyond the familiar pressures of social media, they are navigating a rapid shift from a pre-generative AI world to one where tools like ChatGPT are ubiquitous. This transition places them in a particularly sensitive position: while society at large grapples with the swift evolution of AI, adolescents are simultaneously in the crucial period of their brain's development. I've spoken with a number of young people who, without fully articulating it, express a disquieting sensation—as if their minds are shrinking, akin to how someone with Alzheimer's might feel their cognitive abilities fading. Though not a medical diagnosis, this unsettling feeling of outsourcing mental effort is deeply disturbing. It demands our immediate, serious attention, not just for individual well-being, but for the future of human creativity and society's ability to adapt. To stop our cognitive decline and ensure humans can thrive alongside AI, we must rethink our education and societal norms. Part of the answer is in developing double literacy: Human Literacy: This means a complete understanding of ourselves and society. It includes critical thinking, emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, creativity, and a deep understanding of human relationships and cultural contexts. It's about strengthening the very abilities that make us uniquely human and that AI, in its current form, cannot copy. This involves encouraging deep reading, sustained concentration, and the ability to combine complex information from various sources, rather than relying only on AI summaries. Algorithmic Literacy: This is understanding what AI is, why it works, how it works, and, most importantly, what its limits are. It means grasping the basics of machine learning, recognizing possible biases in algorithms, understanding data privacy issues, and knowing when and how to use AI as a tool, not a crutch. It's about becoming a smart user and a responsible developer of AI. Bringing these two literacies together is not just an academic idea; it's a societal necessity. Education must move away from just memorizing facts to encouraging careful thought, solving complex problems, and developing unique human skills that work with AI, rather than competing against it. We must teach future generations not just how to use AI, but how to think with AI, and perhaps most importantly, how to think independently of AI. The AI race is an invitation to take a step back and face our own humanity. Who are we, without technology? While this revamping of the education curriculum is a task to be tackled at scale, the following five The worry about AI's impact on our brains is a warning, not a final verdict. We have the power to shape our relationship with technology. For individuals, especially those in business who often feel tempted to delegate, the practical advice is this: ANGST: Actively Nurture Growth, Strengthen Thought Analyze Actively: Don't just consume information; dissect it, synthesize it, and form your own conclusions. Before asking AI for a summary, read and put together complex reports or articles yourself. Nurture Natural Thought: Prioritize unassisted brainstorming and problem-solving. Set aside time for pure, unaided idea generation before turning to AI for more options. Work through challenging problems step-by-step using your own reasoning before relying on AI for solutions. Ground Yourself in Focus: Practice deep concentration. Cultivate sustained attention on tasks that need continuous mental effort, resisting the urge to multitask or switch topics often. Strengthen Social Bonds: Engage in rich, complex human interactions. Make face-to-face discussions, active listening, and detailed communication a priority, as these demand empathy and real-time adaptation. Take the Cognitive Lead: Be the primary driver of your mental tasks. Choose to exert mental effort even when AI offers an easier way, purposefully exercising your mental muscles. By purposefully exercising our mental muscles and asserting our human ability to act, we can reduce the risks of AI anxiety and ensure that technology acts as a strong boost to human potential, rather than a quiet cause of mental decline. Our brains are not meant to wither; they are waiting to be challenged, to learn, and to thrive in this new, complex world.
CTV News
21-05-2025
- Health
- CTV News
‘Baby brain' is real. 3 things to know about what's happening to your brain
Pregnancy is one of the three Ps (puberty, pregnancy and perimenopause), a time when a person's brain undergoes physical changes due to hormones. d3sign//File via CNN Newsource Science has pretty well established that the brain isn't static; it changes and adapts throughout our lives in response to life events in a process called neuroplasticity. Researchers are discovering this is especially true of female brains, which get remodeled significantly during the three Ps: puberty (as do the brains of adolescent males), pregnancy and perimenopause. All three transitions are a frequent butt of pop-culture jokes: the sulky, risk-taking teenager who only wants to be with friends; the scattered mom-to-be who leaves her cell phone in the fridge and can't remember where she parked the car; and the hormonal middle-aged woman who can't focus and spontaneously combusts with hot flashes. But far from being laughable, these behavioral stereotypes are the external manifestations of big internal shifts, many of them linked to the effects of fluctuating hormones on the brain. Cognitive neuroscientist Laura Pritschet, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, is fascinated by how female hormones, including estrogen and progesterone, affect the brain's organization and functioning. 'The reason I chose that field is because I was a budding neuroscientist as an undergrad, interested in brain networks and obsessing over how intricate everything was in the brain to simply allow us to have a personality or remember things,' Pritschet told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently, on his podcast Chasing Life. 'At the same time in my personal life, I was surrounded by menopausal women who were talking about their cognitive complaints and their attention issues,' she said. 'I thought we've got to connect these two together and understand this more.' Pritschet even volunteered as a 'guinea pig' during graduate school, having her brain scanned and blood drawn for 30 days, across two complete reproductive cycles (both on and off birth control pills), to begin to answer the question of how the day-to-day fluctuations in hormones relate to the day-to-day changes in the brain. Around this time, other researchers were studying what happens in the brain during pregnancy, Pritschet said, looking at the brain before and after gestation. They found many changes, but because the studies took a snapshot approach, many questions were left unanswered. 'If there's a 3 to 5% decrease in total gray matter volume, when is that occurring (during pregnancy), and how is it occurring?' Pritschet asked. 'We're missing huge gaps in what we call this metamorphosis. 'We know that the 40-week gestational window leads to these body adaptations to support the development of the fetus: We have increased plasma volume, immune function change, metabolic rate, oxygen consumption,' she said. 'What does this trajectory look like over gestation?' To find out, Pritschet and her team tracked the brain changes in one woman, using MRI and blood draws, from pre-conception and fertility treatment throughout her pregnancy to two years postpartum. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in September. 'We saw this reduction in gray matter volume pretty much across the whole brain,' Pritschet explained. 'We saw increased white matter microstructure and ventricle size.' (Quick anatomy lesson: The brain is made up of gray and white matter. Gray matter is where most of the brain's thinking and processing takes place. White matter helps connect the different brain areas, allowing them to communicate with one another.) 'The inflection point was birth,' Pritschet said. 'We saw that those reductions persisted into postpartum, with slight recovery, meaning that certain areas of the brain showed this rise in gray matter volume in early postpartum. Others did not.' Pritschet said this 'choreographed dance between major features of our brain' is in one respect a physical adaptation to the increased blood flow and swelling that comes with pregnancy. Additionally, the changes may also be a preparation for the next stage: parenting. 'It's a fine-tuning of circuits,' she explained. 'We know that pregnancy is the lead-up to this time in your life where there's a lot of behavioral adaptation that has to occur, and new cognitive demands, and a new cognitive load. 'And so the idea here is that there is this pruning or this delicate rewiring to make certain networks or to make communication in the brain more efficient to meet the demands that are going to have to occur,' Pritschet said. This theory is supported by earlier work. 'The first pinnacle papers that came out looking at neuroanatomy in human women from preconception to postpartum found that degree of change in gray matter volume — that sort of reduction — correlated with various … maternal behaviors (such as bonding). Again, that's all correlation,' she said. 'That's an area we need to do a lot more research on, and it needs a lot of context,' she said. 'But you can expect that if there's fine-tuning in these circuits that underlie cognitive or behavioral process, that the more fine-tuning it undergoes, the better performance you're going to have. That's the idea — but it's so much more complicated than that.' What happens to the brain during pregnancy? Pritschet offers these three insights. The only constant is change The body is the outward sign of a lot of inner upheaval. 'Pregnancy is a transformative time in a person's life where the body undergoes rapid physiological adaptations to prepare for motherhood,' Pritschet said via email. 'But pregnancy doesn't just transform the body — it also triggers profound change to the brain and reflects another critical period of brain development.' She called this remodeling an often-overlooked period of brain development that takes place well into a woman's adulthood. How alarmed should women be? Less gray matter may not sound very positive, but it happens for a reason. 'Despite what one might think, these reductions are not a bad thing, and in fact, are to be expected,' Pritschet said, noting that some of the losses are eventually regained. 'This change could indicate a 'fine-tuning' of brain circuits, not unlike what happens to all young adults as they transition through puberty and their brain becomes more specialized.' These changes could also be a response to the high physiological demands of pregnancy itself, she said, 'showcasing just how adaptive the brain can be.' These changes could affect future health and behavior Mapping these changes could open the door to understanding an array of other neurological and behavioral outcomes including postpartum depression, headaches, migraines, epilepsy, stroke and parental behavior. 'The neuroanatomical changes that unfold during (pregnancy) have broad implications for understanding vulnerability to mental health disorders … and individual differences in parental behavior,' said Pritschet. It may even provide critical insight into how the brain changes over a lifespan, she said.
CNN
21-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
3 things to know about brain changes during pregnancy
Editor's note: The podcast Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medical science behind some of life's mysteries big and small. You can listen to episodes here. Science has pretty well established that the brain isn't static; it changes and adapts throughout our lives in response to life events in a process called neuroplasticity. Researchers are discovering this is especially true of female brains, which get remodeled significantly during the three Ps: puberty (as do the brains of adolescent males), pregnancy and perimenopause. All three transitions are a frequent butt of pop-culture jokes: the sulky, risk-taking teenager who only wants to be with friends; the scattered mom-to-be who leaves her cell phone in the fridge and can't remember where she parked the car; and the hormonal middle-aged woman who can't focus and spontaneously combusts with hot flashes. But far from being laughable, these behavioral stereotypes are the external manifestations of big internal shifts, many of them linked to the effects of fluctuating hormones on the brain. Cognitive neuroscientist Laura Pritschet, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, is fascinated by how female hormones, including estrogen and progesterone, affect the brain's organization and functioning. 'The reason I chose that field is because I was a budding neuroscientist as an undergrad, interested in brain networks and obsessing over how intricate everything was in the brain to simply allow us to have a personality or remember things,' Pritschet told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently, on his podcast Chasing Life. 'At the same time in my personal life, I was surrounded by menopausal women who were talking about their cognitive complaints and their attention issues,' she said. 'I thought we've got to connect these two together and understand this more.' Pritschet even volunteered as a 'guinea pig' during graduate school, having her brain scanned and blood drawn for 30 days, across two complete reproductive cycles (both on and off birth control pills), to begin to answer the question of how the day-to-day fluctuations in hormones relate to the day-to-day changes in the brain. Around this time, other researchers were studying what happens in the brain during pregnancy, Pritschet said, looking at the brain before and after gestation. They found many changes, but because the studies took a snapshot approach, many questions were left unanswered. 'If there's a 3 to 5% decrease in total gray matter volume, when is that occurring (during pregnancy), and how is it occurring?' Pritschet asked. 'We're missing huge gaps in what we call this metamorphosis. 'We know that the 40-week gestational window leads to these body adaptations to support the development of the fetus: We have increased plasma volume, immune function change, metabolic rate, oxygen consumption,' she said. 'What does this trajectory look like over gestation?' To find out, Pritschet and her team tracked the brain changes in one woman, using MRI and blood draws, from pre-conception and fertility treatment throughout her pregnancy to two years postpartum. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in September. You can listen to the full episode here. 'We saw this reduction in gray matter volume pretty much across the whole brain,' Pritschet explained. 'We saw increased white matter microstructure and ventricle size.' (Quick anatomy lesson: The brain is made up of gray and white matter. Gray matter is where most of the brain's thinking and processing takes place. White matter helps connect the different brain areas, allowing them to communicate with one another.) 'The inflection point was birth,' Pritschet said. 'We saw that those reductions persisted into postpartum, with slight recovery, meaning that certain areas of the brain showed this rise in gray matter volume in early postpartum. Others did not.' Pritschet said this 'choreographed dance between major features of our brain' is in one respect a physical adaptation to the increased blood flow and swelling that comes with pregnancy. Additionally, the changes may also be a preparation for the next stage: parenting. 'It's a fine-tuning of circuits,' she explained. 'We know that pregnancy is the lead-up to this time in your life where there's a lot of behavioral adaptation that has to occur, and new cognitive demands, and a new cognitive load. 'And so the idea here is that there is this pruning or this delicate rewiring to make certain networks or to make communication in the brain more efficient to meet the demands that are going to have to occur,' Pritschet said. This theory is supported by earlier work. 'The first pinnacle papers that came out looking at neuroanatomy in human women from preconception to postpartum found that degree of change in gray matter volume — that sort of reduction — correlated with various … maternal behaviors (such as bonding). Again, that's all correlation,' she said. 'That's an area we need to do a lot more research on, and it needs a lot of context,' she said. 'But you can expect that if there's fine-tuning in these circuits that underlie cognitive or behavioral process, that the more fine-tuning it undergoes, the better performance you're going to have. That's the idea — but it's so much more complicated than that.' What happens to the brain during pregnancy? Pritschet offers these three insights. The only constant is change The body is the outward sign of a lot of inner upheaval. 'Pregnancy is a transformative time in a person's life where the body undergoes rapid physiological adaptations to prepare for motherhood,' Pritschet said via email. 'But pregnancy doesn't just transform the body — it also triggers profound change to the brain and reflects another critical period of brain development.' She called this remodeling an often-overlooked period of brain development that takes place well into a woman's adulthood. How alarmed should women be? Less gray matter may not sound very positive, but it happens for a reason. 'Despite what one might think, these reductions are not a bad thing, and in fact, are to be expected,' Pritschet said, noting that some of the losses are eventually regained. 'This change could indicate a 'fine-tuning' of brain circuits, not unlike what happens to all young adults as they transition through puberty and their brain becomes more specialized.' These changes could also be a response to the high physiological demands of pregnancy itself, she said, 'showcasing just how adaptive the brain can be.' These changes could affect future health and behavior Mapping these changes could open the door to understanding an array of other neurological and behavioral outcomes including postpartum depression, headaches, migraines, epilepsy, stroke and parental behavior. 'The neuroanatomical changes that unfold during (pregnancy) have broad implications for understanding vulnerability to mental health disorders … and individual differences in parental behavior,' said Pritschet. It may even provide critical insight into how the brain changes over a lifespan, she said. We hope these insights help you better understand the brain changes that occur during pregnancy. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week for a new episode of the Chasing Life podcast. CNN Audio's Lori Galarreta contributed to this report.
CNN
21-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
3 things to know about brain changes during pregnancy
Maternal health Women's healthFacebookTweetLink Follow Editor's note: The podcast Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medical science behind some of life's mysteries big and small. You can listen to episodes here. Science has pretty well established that the brain isn't static; it changes and adapts throughout our lives in response to life events in a process called neuroplasticity. Researchers are discovering this is especially true of female brains, which get remodeled significantly during the three Ps: puberty (as do the brains of adolescent males), pregnancy and perimenopause. All three transitions are a frequent butt of pop-culture jokes: the sulky, risk-taking teenager who only wants to be with friends; the scattered mom-to-be who leaves her cell phone in the fridge and can't remember where she parked the car; and the hormonal middle-aged woman who can't focus and spontaneously combusts with hot flashes. But far from being laughable, these behavioral stereotypes are the external manifestations of big internal shifts, many of them linked to the effects of fluctuating hormones on the brain. Cognitive neuroscientist Laura Pritschet, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, is fascinated by how female hormones, including estrogen and progesterone, affect the brain's organization and functioning. 'The reason I chose that field is because I was a budding neuroscientist as an undergrad, interested in brain networks and obsessing over how intricate everything was in the brain to simply allow us to have a personality or remember things,' Pritschet told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently, on his podcast Chasing Life. 'At the same time in my personal life, I was surrounded by menopausal women who were talking about their cognitive complaints and their attention issues,' she said. 'I thought we've got to connect these two together and understand this more.' Pritschet even volunteered as a 'guinea pig' during graduate school, having her brain scanned and blood drawn for 30 days, across two complete reproductive cycles (both on and off birth control pills), to begin to answer the question of how the day-to-day fluctuations in hormones relate to the day-to-day changes in the brain. Around this time, other researchers were studying what happens in the brain during pregnancy, Pritschet said, looking at the brain before and after gestation. They found many changes, but because the studies took a snapshot approach, many questions were left unanswered. 'If there's a 3 to 5% decrease in total gray matter volume, when is that occurring (during pregnancy), and how is it occurring?' Pritschet asked. 'We're missing huge gaps in what we call this metamorphosis. 'We know that the 40-week gestational window leads to these body adaptations to support the development of the fetus: We have increased plasma volume, immune function change, metabolic rate, oxygen consumption,' she said. 'What does this trajectory look like over gestation?' To find out, Pritschet and her team tracked the brain changes in one woman, using MRI and blood draws, from pre-conception and fertility treatment throughout her pregnancy to two years postpartum. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in September. You can listen to the full episode here. 'We saw this reduction in gray matter volume pretty much across the whole brain,' Pritschet explained. 'We saw increased white matter microstructure and ventricle size.' (Quick anatomy lesson: The brain is made up of gray and white matter. Gray matter is where most of the brain's thinking and processing takes place. White matter helps connect the different brain areas, allowing them to communicate with one another.) 'The inflection point was birth,' Pritschet said. 'We saw that those reductions persisted into postpartum, with slight recovery, meaning that certain areas of the brain showed this rise in gray matter volume in early postpartum. Others did not.' Pritschet said this 'choreographed dance between major features of our brain' is in one respect a physical adaptation to the increased blood flow and swelling that comes with pregnancy. Additionally, the changes may also be a preparation for the next stage: parenting. 'It's a fine-tuning of circuits,' she explained. 'We know that pregnancy is the lead-up to this time in your life where there's a lot of behavioral adaptation that has to occur, and new cognitive demands, and a new cognitive load. 'And so the idea here is that there is this pruning or this delicate rewiring to make certain networks or to make communication in the brain more efficient to meet the demands that are going to have to occur,' Pritschet said. This theory is supported by earlier work. 'The first pinnacle papers that came out looking at neuroanatomy in human women from preconception to postpartum found that degree of change in gray matter volume — that sort of reduction — correlated with various … maternal behaviors (such as bonding). Again, that's all correlation,' she said. 'That's an area we need to do a lot more research on, and it needs a lot of context,' she said. 'But you can expect that if there's fine-tuning in these circuits that underlie cognitive or behavioral process, that the more fine-tuning it undergoes, the better performance you're going to have. That's the idea — but it's so much more complicated than that.' What happens to the brain during pregnancy? Pritschet offers these three insights. The only constant is change The body is the outward sign of a lot of inner upheaval. 'Pregnancy is a transformative time in a person's life where the body undergoes rapid physiological adaptations to prepare for motherhood,' Pritschet said via email. 'But pregnancy doesn't just transform the body — it also triggers profound change to the brain and reflects another critical period of brain development.' She called this remodeling an often-overlooked period of brain development that takes place well into a woman's adulthood. How alarmed should women be? Less gray matter may not sound very positive, but it happens for a reason. 'Despite what one might think, these reductions are not a bad thing, and in fact, are to be expected,' Pritschet said, noting that some of the losses are eventually regained. 'This change could indicate a 'fine-tuning' of brain circuits, not unlike what happens to all young adults as they transition through puberty and their brain becomes more specialized.' These changes could also be a response to the high physiological demands of pregnancy itself, she said, 'showcasing just how adaptive the brain can be.' These changes could affect future health and behavior Mapping these changes could open the door to understanding an array of other neurological and behavioral outcomes including postpartum depression, headaches, migraines, epilepsy, stroke and parental behavior. 'The neuroanatomical changes that unfold during (pregnancy) have broad implications for understanding vulnerability to mental health disorders … and individual differences in parental behavior,' said Pritschet. It may even provide critical insight into how the brain changes over a lifespan, she said. We hope these insights help you better understand the brain changes that occur during pregnancy. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week for a new episode of the Chasing Life podcast. CNN Audio's Lori Galarreta contributed to this report.
Health Line
08-05-2025
- Health
- Health Line
5 Common Misconceptions About Antidepressants
Understanding how antidepressants work and affect your brain is a crucial first step in making informed decisions about your mental health care. Antidepressants are among the most commonly prescribed medications for mental health conditions, offering crucial relief to millions of people worldwide. Yet, despite their widespread use, these medications are still the subject of widespread misinformation. Misconceptions can lead to fear, hesitation, or avoidance of treatment, potentially preventing those in need from finding relief. Learn more about some of the most common myths about antidepressants, unpack the science behind how they really work, and highlight the importance of informed decision making when it comes to mental health care. Myth #1: Antidepressants simply increase serotonin levels One of the most persistent and oversimplified explanations for how antidepressants work is the idea that they just 'boost serotonin' in the brain. While it's true that many antidepressants, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), do affect serotonin, this is not the whole story. Research suggests that antidepressants influence multiple neurotransmitter systems and can promote neuroplasticity (the brain's ability to adapt and change) and neurogenesis (the growth of new brain cells). This means that antidepressants help create a brain environment that's more conducive to healing from depression, rather than just correcting one specific deficiency. Myth #2: Antidepressants will change your personality A common fear is that antidepressants will alter a person's identity or dull their emotional range. In reality, effective antidepressant treatment aims to reduce the symptoms of depression, such as persistent sadness, fatigue, and hopelessness, not to change who you are. When these symptoms are alleviated, older research has found that many people report feeling more like themselves again. One possible side effect, however, is the experience of ' emotional blunting,' where you feel less intense emotions. If this occurs, it's important to talk with your doctor about adjusting your medication to find a treatment that meets your needs. Myth #3: Antidepressants are addictive Worries about addiction often prevent people from considering antidepressants. However, this concern confuses the concept of 'dependence' with 'addiction.' Unlike addictive substances, antidepressants do not produce cravings or compulsive behavior. People don't 'get high' from taking them, nor do they seek them out in increasing doses to maintain an effect. It's true that some individuals experience withdrawal-like symptoms, referred to as 'discontinuation syndrome,' if they stop taking certain antidepressants abruptly. That's why healthcare professionals recommend tapering off medication gradually and under supervision, but this process is not the same as breaking an addiction. Myth #5: Everyone experiences the same side effects Side effects are often discussed in blanket terms, which can be misleading. In reality, people's experiences with antidepressants vary widely. Factors such as genetics, age, metabolism, and other medications all influence how someone reacts to a particular drug. Some individuals might experience side effects like nausea, weight changes, or sleep disturbances, while others might not notice any at all. If one antidepressant doesn't work well or causes side effects, there are many others to try, and most side effects can be managed with help from a healthcare professional. Why accurate information matters Pharmacists, doctors, and mental health professionals are essential allies in navigating misinformation. They can help patients consider their options, set realistic expectations, and make informed choices tailored to their individual needs. It's important to remember that depression is not just 'feeling sad.' It is a complex medical condition, much like diabetes or cancer. The brain, like any other organ, can experience dysfunction, and treating that dysfunction often requires medical intervention. However, not everyone who feels depressed has a depressive disorder, and not everyone with a depressive disorder will benefit from the same treatment. Personalized care based on accurate information and guided by medical professionals is key. Takeaway Antidepressants are often misunderstood, but they can be valuable tools in managing depression. By clearing up common myths and relying on evidence-based information, we can help reduce stigma and make it easier for people to consider treatment options that work for them. Mental health treatment isn't one-size-fits-all, and understanding the real role of antidepressants can make a big difference in how we approach treatment.
