Korea's weight-drug depression finding rests on 846 users. The 4.2x ideation number on fewer.

The denominators do most of the work here. Of 27,741 respondents, 846 said a doctor had prescribed them a weight-loss drug in the previous year, about 3.0% of the sample ^[3][1]. Apply the reported rates to that group and roughly 84 people carry the suicidal-ideation finding and roughly 14 carry the attempt finding ^[3][2]. The 4.2 times ideation figure among those who regained weight sits on a subgroup of the 846, and the report does not say how large it is ^[10].

The published multiples also do not behave like simple prevalence ratios. Divide the raw rates and depression comes out at 1.94 against the 1.9 reported, close enough to be the same number ^[4][9][4][5]. But raw suicide attempts run 2.83 to one while the paper reports 1.7, and raw ideation runs 2.20 to one while the paper reports 2.7 ^{[6][8][9][4][5]}. Adjustment is pushing in both directions and the account of the study does not say what it adjusted for. The finding that survives untouched is the plainest one: a 10.7 point gap in self-reported depression, 22.1% against 11.4% ^[4][6].

The research team led by Sohn Ki-young of Asan Medical Center did not read its own regain result as pharmacology ^[1]. The tendency for these indicators to rise as weight came back "may reflect not only the neurological and psychiatric effects of the drugs themselves, but also a combination of psychological and social factors related to failure in weight control," the team wrote ^[11]. The paper is titled "Association Between Weight-Loss Drug Use, Weight Change, and Depression and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors," and that is the exposure it measures: any prescribed weight-loss drug, over a decade of survey rounds, with no breakdown by molecule reported ^[12][3].

Set that against the volume it is being read next to. Mounjaro was prescribed 1,501,161 times in Korea in the ten months to May after an August launch, an average of 150,116 a month ^[14][7]. That count exists only as a byproduct of non-reimbursement: because Mounjaro and Wegovy are not covered, there are no claims to add up, so the Drug Utilization Review checks clinics run stand in as the gauge ^[16]. It became public because the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service handed the data to Han Ji-ah of the People Power Party, who sits on the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee ^[15].

A label change is not what this paper buys. It has 846 exposed respondents, no drug identification, and an author quote offering a non-pharmacological reading of the worst subgroup ^[3][11]. What it buys is a citable national prevalence figure in the jurisdiction now recording 150,116 prescriptions a month, and the uncomfortable part for a business built on refills is that the highest ideation multiple in the paper attaches to the drug not holding ^[10][14][7].