Can Diabetes Drugs like Ozempic Tackle the Mental Health Crisis?

Recommendations For Kelli Coviello, injections of Wegovy didn't just satiate her appetite and help her lose weight.They lowered her blood pressure, improved her mood, and helped her think clearly.Coviello, a principal's assistant at an elementary school in Massachusetts, would typically get home from work, eat something, and go to bed.A month after starting Wegovy, she has the energy to help a friend campaign for local government, prepare her son's dinner, and go on a walk in the evening instead.Although she is already on antianxiety medication, Wegovy (semaglutide) helped alleviate her anxiety and depression like nothing else had."I feel like me again," Coviello says.Semaglutide, the same compound that's in Ozempic, is part of a class of medications known as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists.These drugs mimic GLP-1 hormones naturally released in the body when eating.Scientists have long known that these hormones prompt the body to make insulin, producing feelings of satiation.On this basis, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Ozempic for type 2 diabetes in 2017 and Wegovy for weight loss in 2021.Because these hormonal pathways can be tied into numerous bodily processes, researchers are now trying to study what else GLP-1 analogs could potentially treat.Early signs indicate they may have a role to play in treating a mass crisis: mental health.Earlier this year, data from about 4 million patients published by Epic Research, a data science arm of the medical record company Epic Systems, showed that semaglutide was linked with reductions in the prevalence of anxiety and depression diagnoses.And for patients with diabetes, nearly every GLP-1 receptor agonist on the market was associated with reduced diagnoses of the two conditions.Clinical trials are underway to test these preliminary signals and determine whether GLP-1 analogs can reduce symptoms for people with depression, schizophrenia, addiction, and bipolar disorderalong with neurological conditions like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.Why these drugs might be able to treat many of these neurological and psychiatric conditions is unclear, but finding out how exactly they work could help us better understand the body-and-mind connection and treat millions of people worldwide."For some people, these meds do change everything, including mood, when antidepressants haven't really done that much," says