Taking Antidepressants During Pregnancy Could Heighten The Risk Of Language Disorders In Children

A study reveals that taking antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy could increase the risk of language disorders that includes dyslexia in children. There was about 37 percent risk of speech or language disorders in children of mothers who took the antidepressants compared with the depressed mothers who were not medicated.

The study was printed online in the Jama Psychiatry. It was led by researchers from University Medical Center and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, according to Yahoo News.

Dr. Alan Brown, the lead author of the study and the professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center said that there would be about 1 percent risk language disorder in children of those mothers who did not take antidepressants. On the other hand, if the mother took a SSRI, there would an increase of risk of about 1.37 percent.

 Dr. Brown explained that 1.37 percent risk is considered low. On the other hand, so many people are exposed---six to 10 percent of the mother are exposed to antidepressants throughout the world. This increases the public health burden.

The study involved 845,345 single live births and the researchers examined their records between 1996 and 2010 and categorized the mothers into three groups. The first group included 15,596 mothers who purchased SSRIs once or more before or during pregnancy and the second group comprised of 9,537 mothers who had depression or other psychiatric disorder yet not purchase antidepressant while pregnant. Meanwhile, the third group consisted of 31,207 mothers who did not have depression and never purchased the antidepressants.

The results showed that there was an increased risk of language disorders in children of mothers who took SSRIs during pregnancy and the children of depressed mothers who did not take a SSRI compared with the children of mothers who were not depressed and not medicated. The researchers also discovered that there was an even higher rate of language disorders among the children of the mother who took SSRIs at least twice during pregnancy, according to CNN.