If you or your service users want to know more about antidepressants in general, the different families of antidepressants, or individual drugs, you will find a resource to fit the need here. Level of detail ranges from lay-person to pharmacist-appropriate.
Coming soon for students: There will suggested activities for every stage of your training.
General and Quick Fact Sheets
Antidepressant Factsheet from Rethink Mental Illness
Pdf document written in lay-terms. Good to hand on to service users, and easy to understand.
Covers main groups (SSRIs, SNRIs, Tricyclics and MAOIs) and examples of them.
Covers common side-effects, cautions and contra-indications.
Doesn’t cover atypicals like mirtazapine.
Royal College of Psychiatrists: Antidepressants Information Leaflet
Another good source of general information for nurses and service users.
Very similar to the resource above, but slightly ‘wordier’.
More Detailed, Specific Information
Mind
For: General public & nurses
It has a number of very good resources relating to antidepressants. Below are three of the stand-out sections.
- Bullet-pointed facts about the different families of antidepressants.
- Information about individual antidepressants. This part is nicely laid out, is written in a very approachable way, but contains a surprising amount of detail.
- Side-effects. These are given for each sepcific drug with the link above.are provided with the link above. However this link is great if you would like to know about the side-effects antidepressants have in common.
British National Formulary: Antidepressant Drugs
For: Nurses, Drs & pharmacists
You’ll all be aware of the BNF, but it’s useful to know there is a freely available electronc version in the UK.
Comprehensive, medical terminology about individual drugs.
Valuable information about the families of drugs at the top of every chapter.
Medscape: Psychiatrics
For: Nurses & Drs
Search or browse for information about particular drugs.
Advantages: has easy-to-find, concise and well-categorised information on individual drugs’ pharmacology and drug-drug interactions.
Disadvantages: Doesn’t give information about families of drugs like the BNF does.
Caution: American-based website, so some protocols will differ.
Electronic Medicines Compendium (eMC)
For: Nurses, Drs & pharmacists
Advantages: UK-based medicines search engine. It has a database of all patient information leaflets. It also has a database of Summary of Product Characteristics (basically all the information about a drug that anyone could ever wish to know!). This even includes intricate details of drugs’ pharmacokinetic properties.
Disadvantages: With separate information available for every different dose of a drug, it can be difficult to navigate initially.