by Madeleine Hubbard
Women who started taking birth control pills as teenagers showed depression symptoms at a 130% higher rate than those who never used oral contraceptives (OC), according to a new study of more than a quarter of a million women.
Women who began taking oral contraceptives as adults had a 92% higher rate of depressive symptoms compared to those who never took the pill, while women who started taking the birth control pill “before or at the age of 20 had 130% higher rate of depressive symptoms,” according to a U.K. study published Monday by Cambridge University Press.
The risk of depression is particularly high during the first two years of birth control use, the study also found. Additionally, starting the pill as an adolescent “might increase the risk of depression later in life,” the researchers said.
The study was composed of 264,557 women, 80.6% of whom had used birth control at some point in their lives.
“Our findings support that OC use is causally associated with an increased risk of depression in adolescents as well as in adults, especially shortly after the initiation,” the study’s conclusion states before urging “further research to determine the cause of hormone contraceptive-precipitated depression are warranted.”
After the first two years of birth control pill use, the increased rate of depression declined.
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Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
