For a lot of pregnant woman, there are difficult choices to make as they weigh their own health and well-being against that of their unborn child. There’s been conflicting information about whether commonly-prescribed medications like antidepressants, which many people rely upon, can cause harm to the fetus.
Now, a new study says pregnant women who take antidepressants during pregnancy are not putting their child at risk for intellectual disability. The study, which was published today in JAMA Psychiatry, looked at more than 179,000 children, half of whom had mothers who had taken antidepressants while they were pregnant. And the researchers didn’t find any connections between the child’s future mental challenges and the mother’s medication use.