Antidepressants for Headaches – Will it Fix your pain?
At the pain centre we have seen how antidepressants are being prescribed for headaches. Many people assume that if pain medications stop working, antidepressants must be the next logical step even for those who show no signs of depression.
But now the research questions the effectiveness.
The research paper is titled “Tricyclic and Tetracyclic Antidepressants for the Prevention of Frequent Episodic or Chronic Tension-Type Headache in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.”
The findings were underwhelming. They found that tricyclic antidepressants reduced headache frequency by only five days per month. Even while taking the medication, patients still experienced headaches an average of 16 times per month.
Any pain relief reported was short-lived, with headaches consistently returning over time.
In our clinical experience, these medications are not effective, even when prescribed to patients who are also living with depression. This raises an important question: are antidepressants truly addressing the root cause of headaches, or simply being used when other options have failed?
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