Women More Likely Than Men To Use Antidepressants While Dealing With Breakup: Study

It was found during the course of the study that in the four years that led to a couple splitting, women increased their antidepressant intake by nearly double the rate, as compared to men.

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Going through a breakup can be a difficult and painful process. People deal with heartbreak differently. While some snap out of it faster, others may take months or even years to get over their grief. A recent study, however, seems to have found that women take the harder hit, as compared to men, and when dealing with a breakup later in life their dependency on antidepressants also increases.

The Finnish study published recently in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health looked at the "trajectories of antidepressant use before and after union dissolution and re-partnering in later life". It examined the data of nearly 2,28,644 people between 50 and 70 years of age, from 2000 to 2014.

Yaoyue Hu, a Chongqing Medical University professor, and other researchers focused on the mental health aspect of a breakup through their research, and the impact divorces and remarriages done later in life can have on a person's mind. They analysed antidepressant use four years before, and four years after, for three relationship situations: breakups (non-marital separation and divorce), bereavement (death of a partner) and re-partnering. Among those individuals whose data was examined, 32.8 per cent were divorced, 37.2 per cent were bereaved and 30 per cent were separated.

It was found during the course of the study that in the four years that led to a couple splitting, women increased their antidepressant intake by nearly double the rate, as compared to men. While only 3.2 per cent of men took antidepressants, 6 per cent of women did the same. Interestingly, it was also found that when individuals re-partnered, they reduced their use of antidepressants. The reductions, however, were "brief among women", as opposed to men.

The study indicated that "greater increases in [antidepressant] use associated with union dissolution among women may indeed relate to the fact that the costs of union dissolution on mental health fall more heavily on women than men".

According to the UK's National Health Service (NHS), antidepressants are medicines that are used to treat clinical depression, but they are also used for other conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), generalised anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While it is not known exactly how they work, antidepressants are thought to increase the levels of chemicals in the brain, called neurotransmitters. Certain neurotransmitters -- serotonin and noradrenaline -- are linked to mood and emotion.

Neurotransmitters may also affect pain signals sent by nerves, which may explain why some antidepressants can help relieve long-term pain, the NHS stated.