30 million Americans Take Antidepressants: Iodine Launches New Study in Support of Mental Health Awareness Month
Iodine Timeline, a month-long study, tracks real-world experiences with antidepressant medications
May 07, 2015, 10:23 ET
SAN FRANCISCO, May 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Iodine, an online resource combining the latest medical research on medications with real-life experiences from consumers, launched a new month-long study on May 1 to track people's experiences while taking antidepressant medications.
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More than 30 million Americans currently take antidepressants, yet the largest study conducted to-date included just 4,041 individuals (the Star-D trial). Iodine hopes to tap the experience of the American public to uncover valuable insights that empower others to make smarter, more effective treatment choices.
"People battling depression sometimes take three or more medications over six months before landing on the best treatment for them. Iodine hopes to improve upon this trial-and-error by enabling people to learn about the experiences others have had," said co-founder Thomas Goetz. "We already share our opinions about businesses, restaurants, movies and more – isn't it time we leveraged the power of community to improve the way we make decisions about our health?"
The Iodine Timeline study is open throughout May, Mental Health Awareness Month.
The Study
To participate in Iodine Timeline, interested parties opt-in to receive short emails that ask them to spend just one minute reporting their experiences with an antidepressant. Iodine is tracking people's drug-related side effects, as well as:
- Mood
- Appetite
- Sleep
- Weight Gain
Timeline will seek answers to big questions such as:
- When do antidepressants really kick in?
- Are side effects like weight gain just temporary?
- How often do people experience sexual side effects?
"While there are millions of Americans taking antidepressants, few track their daily experiences. With Timeline we hope to capture feedback from hundreds and thousands, so we can help create meaning out of the frustration they feel when trying to identify the best treatment option," continued Goetz.
The Iodine Experience
Iodine uses a "worth it" score to measure how likely people are to continue taking their medications – making it easy for users to navigate treatments, find top-rated medications and read real-life experiences for hundreds of health conditions and medications without confusing medical jargon. Additional benefits of Iodine include:
- Personalization – Users can personalize their experience, adding filters to surface information they're especially interested in or remove data that isn't relevant to them. Users can also filter by demographics, such as the experience of women 35-54.
- Access to Community – More than 100,000 people have shared what works and what doesn't, and this experience and information will help build better insights based on this knowledge.
- Simple Answers – Tools let you compare one medication with its alternatives, learn what has worked best for different demographic groups, and get information on "What to Expect" with each medication.
- Expertise – Iodine has tapped a superb team of pharmacists and MDs to turn their best practices into clear, actionable information. The site also uses FDA data to show possible side effects.
Becoming a member of the Iodine community is free. To join, visit Iodine.com. The Iodine Timeline study is at try.iodine.com/timeline.
About Iodine
Iodine, Inc. is dedicated to giving individuals better, more actionable information about their healthcare choices – starting with medications. The company's online tools allow individuals to drill into massive amounts of data from clinical research and real life experience to gain deeper insights into medications, both prescription and over-the-counter. Iodine's vision is to transform healthcare by turning experience into better medicine. Iodine launched in September 2014. The company is staffed by a team of data scientists, designers and healthcare experts. Iodine has been called "The Yelp of medicine" by TIME.
SOURCE Iodine, Inc.