Psychotropic drug treatment during breastfeeding appears to be largely safe.

The safety of any drug treatment during pregnancy or lactation is always of paramount importance. Researchers followed 280 infants whose mothers contacted a Drug Information Center, seeking information about psychotropics during lactation. This group was compared with a group of 152 callers, seeking information about antibiotics. Data on adverse effects, physical measures and gross motor developmental milestone achievements of the breastfed infants was obtained during a follow-up telephone interview. No significant differences between infants in the two groups were observed with regard to height, weight, head circumference and weight-length ratio percentile, and the use of psychotropic medications during breastfeeding was not significantly associated with adverse reactions. After propensity score matching (n = 120 pairs) to control for differences in baseline characteristics and the length of lactation, only one significant difference was reported, sleepiness in infants in the study group (7/120) and none in the comparison group (p = 0.008). More here