Children and teens taking antidepressants might be more likely to attempt, complete suicide
From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
Antidepressant medications may be associated with suicide attempts and death in severely depressed children and adolescents but not in adults, according to an article in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently began requiring drug manufacturers to include a warning regarding the risk of suicidal behavior among children and teens treated with antidepressants after a large analysis of clinical trials revealed a potential link.
The researchers first selected all cases of completed suicides (eight children and adolescents and 86 adults) and suicide attempts (263 children and adolescents, 521 adults).
They then matched each case with one to five controls based on demographic information, period following hospital discharge, presence or absence of a suicide attempt prior to hospital admission, state of residence, other medication use and presence or absence of a substance abuse disorder.
"In practice, physicians face the difficult challenge of balancing safety concerns against evidence that depression is a key risk factor for adult and adolescent suicide and that antidepressant agents are effective for adult and adolescent depression."
Read more from this post.
