June 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — A new paper just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) warns that hormonal birth control is one of several prescription drugs that can increase a patient’s depression, potentially to the point of suicide.
The paper, published Monday, comes as the recent suicides of fashion designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain have sparked renewed public discussion of the causes and prevention of suicidal tendencies.
The researchers, led by University of Illinois-Chicago pharmacy professor Dima Qato, examined more than 200 prescription drugs that list an increased risk of depression among the side effects — such as hormonal birth control, blood pressure and heart medications, and painkillers — on a pool of 26,000 adults in the United States from 2005 to 2014.
They found that 6.9 percent of people who take at least one of the drugs in question suffer from depression, and that the amount jumps to 15.3 percent for those on three or more, as opposed to a 4.7 percent depression rate for people who don’t take any depression-associated drugs.
“In this cross-sectional U.S. population-based survey study conducted between 2005 and 2014, the estimated overall prevalence of U.S. adults using medications with depression as a potential adverse effect was 37.2 percent,” the study’s summary page says.
The findings are particularly alarming because many of the drugs don’t come with warning labels, and are meant for conditions users wouldn’t naturally associate with their emotional or mental state.
“Many may be surprised to learn that their medications, despite having nothing to do with mood or anxiety or any other condition normally associated with depression, can increase their risk of experiencing depressive symptoms, and may lead to a depression diagnosis,” Qato warned, according to Quartz.
Quartz’s Olivia Goldhill noted that the same researchers are also responsible for a 2016 paper linking hormonal birth to a 70 percent higher risk of depression. Other studies have found similar results throughout the years, while both research and personal testimony has also linked oral contraceptives to increased risk of blood clots, hair loss, Crohn’s disease, brain shrinkage, breast cancer, hardening of the arteries, glaucoma, and cervical cancer.
Despite the evidence, left-wing politicians and activists promote contraception as an unqualified good and core prerequisite to women’s health. The federal government under former President Barack Obama attempted to force most employers, including religious organizations, to subsidize birth control for their employees until President Donald Trump moved to rescind the mandate in October.
Planned Parenthood, the United States’ largest abortion performer, has identified “access” to birth control — a euphemism for forcing either taxpayers or employers to pay for it — among its state-level legislative priorities.
The latest JAMA study admitting birth control’s dark side is somewhat surprising in light of the left-wing politicization of the American Medical Association in recent years, such as endorsing human cloning and declaring that “health” concerns required redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, as well as some affiliates abandoning their opposition to assisted suicide.