The reporting of this trial is a nightmare that could easily cause unintended pregnancies THE PILL ISN'T MAKING EVERYONE DEPRESSEDpic.twitter.com/3TOiMkA9ww
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This is somewhat supported by the study, because people who started using oral contraceptives in their teens were less likely to use them as adults - it's not unlikely that their mental health influenced the decision to use contraceptives rather than the other way around
It's also worth noting that, while the headline statistic is TRIPLE THE RISK, the absolute risk of depression associated with oral contraceptives was more like 5-10%
Even more importantly, a large meta-analysis that came out last year looked at some specific types of oral contraceptive and found no relationship with depression at allpic.twitter.com/WjMyaPM7vi
Does the pill have side-effects (sometimes really nasty ones)? Absolutely. I don't for a second want to diminish the impact that oral contraceptives can have
That being said, the fearmongering in these headlines is a massive headache. There may be ~some~ association between oral contraceptive use and depression, but it's not nearly as scary as you might've seen reported
Also, the side-effects of oral contraceptive use usually pale in comparison to the side-effects of pregnancy, so it's a bit of a challenging argument
I wrote a blog about a similar study a while back, with almost identical issueshttps://medium.com/@gidmk/why-is-the-pill-so-depressing-1b429d271d33 …
I should also add - the authors of the paper were very upfront about all of this, and emphasized that women should still use contraceptives, so I think it's very much the media's problem here
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