Psychotropic Medication-induced Weight Gain or Loss Looked through the Lens of Age and Psychiatric Diagnoses: A Narrative Review

Background: There is a myriad of risk factors associated with overweight and obesity in the psychiatric population.

Objective: The review aimed at looking at the psychotropic medications induced weight gain or loss through the lens of age categories and psychiatric diagnoses.

Methods: Electronic searches of three databases (from 2000 to 2018) using Boolean operators and keywords retrieved thousands of peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals, and based on exclusion and inclusion criteria 155 pertinent articles were retained for this review.

Results: No age is immune to weight gain provided patients are treated either with standalone antipsychotic medications, antidepressants, mood stabilizers or their combinations. These medications are mostly used in adult patients with schizophrenia, mood disorders, other related psychoses and anxiety disorders resulting in more significant weight gain. Children and adolescents with similar mental disorders are also prone to develop weight gain when exposed to similar psychotropic drugs on a longterm basis. Unlike those two age categories, elderly patients with dementia or carry-on psychoses (residual psychosis) treated with psychotropic similar medicines tend to have minimal weight gain. Children and adult patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder exposed to psychostimulants, by and large, develop a significant reduction in weight. Similarly, elderly patients with dementias managed with acetylcholinesterase inhibitors develop a decrease in weight.

Conclusion: Although results of several studies concerning psychotropic drugs use in special age categories and several diagnoses are inconsistent across the board, more studies with rigorous methodologies are needed to further clarify the contributions by age and psychiatric diagnoses to weight gain in a psychiatric population exposed to psychotropic medications.