On 2004-03-22 18:45:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Suicide Warning Sought for 10 Antidepressants.
SSRIs: prozac, paxil, zoloft, effexor, celexa, lexapro, luvox
Other Drugs: remeron, serzone, wellbutrin
See website below for link to news article.
http://www.teenadvocatesusa.homestead.c ... youth.html
"
This information was already in the PDR entries and is obvious when you consider the disorders being treated.
The problem is one of intentionality. Depression makes people feel worthless and suicidal. Depression also saps the patient's will and ability to act.
When you put a depressed patient on an antidepressant (any clinically effective antidepressant), there is always the risk that if the patient has formed the intent and a plan to commit suicide, that as soon as the depression lifts enough for them to have the will and ability to act restored, that the patient will carry out that plan and suicide.
Any depression patient needs to be watched closely in the early stages of taking any antidepressant that actually *works* because of the possibility that the patient might have a plan and intent to suicide and just hasn't had the energy to carry out the plan yet.
It's not the drugs, it's the disease.
A patient who does not already intend to commit suicide is not going to commit suicide just because you put them on an antidepressant.
For a patient that does have that intent, it doesn't matter what causes it---dead is dead, after all. It just means that you have to watch patients with suicidal plans or intentions very closely, especially in the early stages of treatment.
In a nutshell, these drugs increase suicides among people who already intend to commit suicide because the drugs *work* at lifting the depression.
Any antidepressant that we could possibly develop that *works* would have the same problem.
People with suicidal intent or plans have to be watched very closely until you can get them stable enough to persuade them to change their minds, and we're probably never going to be 100% perfect at saving all of them---but hopefully by watching them closely we can at least improve some over where we are now.
