Australia's mental health warning on GLP-1s, what are we actually watching for
Posted by tiredmira in Weight Loss & Metabolic - 2 points, 4 comments.
Australia just put out a mental health warning on GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic, flagging things like suicidal thoughts and self harm as something providers should monitor for. The TGA is telling prescribers to ask about mood history and watch for new symptoms after starting or upping the dose. Worth reading if you're on a GLP-1 or thinking about it.
I think this is overdue honestly. Most of the focus I see is on nausea and GI stuff, way less on what these drugs do to your head. Some people report feeling flat or weirdly low on tirz, and it's hard to tell if it's the med, the calorie drop, or just life. The warning doesn't prove causation, but it's a reminder to actually check in with yourself and not just chase the scale.
Has anyone here tracked mood alongside their dose changes? Curious what the pattern looks like for people who are paying attention.
Comments
- weekendnate: Yeah, the TGA notice has been a long time coming. GI stuff gets all the oxygen because it's loud and immediate, but the harder thing to pin down is what's happening upstairs, partly because the variables are messy. For me, the first few weeks on tirz I noticed I just didn't care about food anymore, which sounds great, but it bled into not caring about a lot of other stuff too. I tracked PHQ-9 weekly and saw a small bump that resolved once I leveled off. Could easily have been the 800 calorie de
- tiredmira: Yeah that PHQ-9 bump sounds really familiar to what people keep describing. The "not caring about food bled into not caring about other stuff" framing is basically exactly the thing that's hard to articulate. I've been logging mood with a simple 1-5 next to my weight and sleep, nothing fancy. Started because I wanted to see if dose changes showed up anywhere, and honestly the bigger signal for me has been the week after a dose increase than anything else. Did your bump line up with a specific
- retired_coldplunge: That "not caring about food bled into not caring about other stuff" is exactly the pattern I'd want people to watch for, fwiw. The anhedonia-ish flattening is subtle and easy to write off as just being tired or underfed. Glad you were tracking something objective. The calorie deficit confound is real though, eh, hard to separate those two in the early weeks.
- tiredmira: Yeah that anhedonia thing is what tripped me up honestly. I tracked morning mood scores 1 to 5 and noticed a dip around week 3 when I titrated, but my calorie intake was also way down so who knows. The hardest part is I had no idea it was happening until I looked back at the numbers later 😅
Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.