Since the beginning of the year, the demand for antidepressants has increased in Russia

In the first 11 weeks of 2024, Russian pharmacies sold three million and 600 thousand packages of antidepressants for a total of almost three billion rubles. “Vedomosti” writes about this with reference to the report of the analytical company DSM Group.

The publication does not mention the reasons for the increase in sales of antidepressants in Russia.

According to the company’s experts, this amount has become a record for the last five years. Compared to the same period last year, sales in packages increased by a third, and the increase in money was 45%. Last year, in the first 11 weeks, 2.7 million packages of antidepressants worth two billion rubles were sold.

Experts also note that doctors began to more often prescribe antidepressants of the new generation instead of such outdated drugs as afobazol, corvalol, phenibut. Corvalol and phenibut have been present on the Russian pharmaceutical market since the 1960s, afobazole – since 2006. During this time, the effectiveness of these drugs has not been scientifically proven, according to the doctors interviewed by the publication.

It was previously reported that from January to September 2022, the spending of Russian citizens on antidepressants increased by 70%, Russians spent 5 billion rubles on them, according to the authors of the study of the Center for the Development of Advanced Technologies.

The demand for antidepressants can only grow in the future, experts predict.