Mental Health & Diabetes Medications Used for Weight Loss: Ozempic, Mounjaro

While some of these medications have been used for the treatment of diabetes for years, their side effects (and in-particular, their long-term side effects) for individuals using them specifically for weight loss, are still not completely understood. Unfortunately, it can take years or even decades, to fully understand the long-term risks of a medication. When you see a rapid increase in the use of a medication, especially when it is being used for a novel purpose (i.e. in a population of individuals who the medications were not originally approved for), there should be some caution exercised, or at the least, an increase in monitoring and research.

Patients utilizing medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro for weight loss purposes, is a relatively new phenomenon. As mental health professionals, we have seen a wide-degree of variability regarding the effect of these medications, on our patient’s mental health. While we do not prescribe these medications, we find it incredibly important to keep our patient’s medication lists up-to-date, and there has been an explosion of these medications, on those lists. On one hand, we’ve had some patients who effectively lost a reasonable amount of weight, and this resulted in improved self-confidence and an improvement in depressive symptoms. We have also had patients where rapid weight loss resulted in the re-triggering of eating disorders and ED behaviors, and a great deal of mood instability, as a result. Rapid weight loss isn’t always a good thing (even if that is what a patient hopes to gain from a medication). Rapid weight loss can create a hyper-focus on body image, which may be problematic. Increased media and celebrity attention related to “success stories,” can also minimize the importance of healthy weight loss through diet and exercise, or even make patients struggling to lose weight feel that they are a failure. They can also make individuals feel that they need a certain medication, to achieve a healthy physique. This could actually detract from an individual’s likelihood of establishing healthy routines and habits.