I grew up in the era when they gave you antibiotics if you sneezed twice—I had quite the collection of those plastic orange pill bottles with the white caps. I remember wondering vaguely why they were ...

Antidepressants are commonly prescribed to help manage these symptoms, with a 2020 study finding that of more than 737,000 people who have dementia, nearly half of them received these medications.

Antidepressants don’t make problems go away, but they can make it easier to cope with the problems, Dr. Chua said. Lifestyle changes may also help, the experts said.

Dr. Aftab is a psychiatrist and the author of “Conversations in Critical Psychiatry.” Like every psychiatrist, I have patients for whom antidepressants are transformative, even lifesaving. But ...