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Samuel J. Mann, MD
New York Hospital—Cornell Medical College

JAMA. 1986;255(23):3248-3249.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In the recent article, "Increased Antidepressant Use in Patients Prescribed β-blockers,"¹ the authors point out an association between β-blockers use and the use of tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs). The authors based their study on numbers crunched out from computerized Medicaid prescription data. After reading this study, I wish to condemn its findings.

The authors stated that 10% of study subjects were receiving TCAs at some point during the two-year period studied. Tricyclic antidepressants were taken by 11% of all hypertensive persons, by 10% of hypertensive persons taking methyldopa, by 10% of hypertensive persons taking reserpine, by 15% of patients taking hydralazine or hypoglycemic agents, and by 17% of patients taking hydrochlorothiazide. In contrast, tricyclic antidepressants were taken by 23% of patients taking β-blockers. The author suggests that this shows that β-blockers may frequently cause depression.

I offer the following criticisms: (1) The temporal relationship between TCA use . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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