Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSAntidepressants used for autism cause nightmares, says study
Research has found that an antidepressant sometimes used to treat the symptoms of autism can lead to repetitive behaviour and nightmares.
Specialists sometimes prescribe antidepressants off-label for autism because it has previously been suggested that it might help behaviours such as spinning, twirling and head-banging. This is because some antidepressants have been shown to help treat repetitive actions in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Citalopram (Cipramil) is the most popular kind of antidepressant medicine used to treat autistic children, but a US study has concluded that the risks of prescribing the drug outweigh any benefits.
Dr Bryan King, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington medical school in the US, compared the drug, which is marketed as Celexa in North America, against placebo for autism.
The results show that citalopram worked no better than placebo and those on the intervention were more than twice as likely to develop repetitive behaviours, as well as other side-effects including sleep problems and hyperactivity.
Writing in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, prominent Yale University autism researcher Dr Fred Volkmar said the findings could ‘change this practice’.
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