Short-term antidepressant use made exercise feel slightly harder without consistently lowering performance: in 10 crossover trials of 99 male athletes, RPE rose 0.52 points on the Borg 6-20 scale while time trial, power, heart rate and lactate showed no significant overall change, but reboxetine alone slowed the time trial by 3.62 min and cut mean power by 19.97 W

Yun and colleagues asked whether taking an antidepressant changes objective performance and perceived exertion in athletes.

They searched SPORTDiscus, PubMed, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library up to March 2025 for randomised trials in elite, competitive or recreational athletes that compared an antidepressant with placebo or no treatment, and pooled them with random-effects models. Ten crossover trials with 99 male athletes qualified.

The drugs were reboxetine (a noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor), bupropion (a noradrenaline-dopamine reuptake inhibitor) and the SSRIs fluoxetine and paroxetine. Taken short term, the drugs raised rating of perceived exertion by 0.52 points on the 6-20 Borg scale. Time-trial performance, mean power output, heart rate and blood lactate showed no significant overall change.

In subgroups, reboxetine slowed time-trial performance by 3.62 min and lowered mean power by 19.97 W. The authors conclude that short-term use brought a small rise in perceived exertion without a consistent loss of objective performance, and that the evidence, all from men and acute dosing, says nothing yet about women or long-term treatment of athletes with depression.