Hair loss

[sufi08825]

Thanks for the responses - the basis of my concern is that I've looked at several medication blog sites and have seen numerous posts of women reporting hair loss from anti-depressants including Wellbutrin so I was really questioning the validity of the "less than 1%" finding from the Wellbutrin trials.  In addition, I've spoken to several physicians and psychiatric nurse practitioners who prescribe anti-depressants and they tell me that their patients often report side effects (and less effectiveness) from generic versions that are not reported about brand - for what it's worth but then again, I also play close attention to what consumers on blog sites say as well.  We've moved on to Lexapro 10mg once a day so hopefully we won't have the hair loss side effect anymore.

[sufi08825]

I try to keep an open mind, especially in figuring out the best medication for our adolescent daughter so feedback on medhelp.org is helpful and we have a really good psychiatrist who tries to balance her expertise and knowledge with our input.  I have no way to empirically measure whether the feedback on hairloss is from the 1% as I do not know the size, ages, length of time on medication, etc. of the trail cohort.  It could be that not one of those reporting on blogs is from the 1% - no way to be sure.  Anyway, thanks for your feedback.  I do trust that medical professionals at pharmaceutical companies and FDA want to do the right thing when side-effects are reported and I always reserve some caution when viewing the free market as complete honesty is not always supported when decisions regarding full disclosure are made at higher levels (at least that's been my experience in large organizatons).

We've decided on a new short term strategy which is to first try a stimulant medication (Concerta) for ADHD to see if there are short term gains as the literature seems to indicate that depression and ADHD exascerbate one another and for a teen whose school performance and social interactions are diminished by ADHD, correcting that may improve the depression and we may find out in a short time.  If that doesn't work, we'll go back to an anti-depressant.

[birdie0907]

The numerous reports may be the 1% who have the hair loss, so that doesn't prove the original drug trial %s were in error. Many people take this drug so if there was a large % with hair loss I would imagine it would have been reported and docs would stop prescribing it.

That is a really interesting bit of information about the generics.