By IANS,
Washington: A class of anti-depressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) can alter one’s personality besides improving the mood, according to a new study.
The findings, based on a study of 240 participants with major depressive disorder, counter the assumption that personality changes particularly during treatment with SSRIs – compounds used in the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders and some personality disorders – occur only as a by-product of easing depressive symptoms.
In this study, the advantage of an SSRI, paroxetine, over a placebo in changing personality, appears far more drastic than its advantage in alleviating depression.
“Investigating how SSRIs affect personality characteristics like neuroticism and extraversion (trait associated with extroverts) may thus lead toward a more refined understanding of the mechanisms of SSRIs,” said Robert DeRubeis, professor of psychology in Penn University School of Arts and Sciences.
“SSRIs perhaps can be viewed as personality-normalising agents, potentially useful in treating many disorders associated with high neuroticism and low extraversion.”
Among responders to paroxetine, those for whom neuroticism (mental or personality disturbance) changed the most during treatment were also those least likely to relapse, said a Penn release.
The study is published in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.