Study Questions Suicide-Antidepressant Link

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Curtailing the use of newer antidepressants because of recent reports that they may increase the risk of suicide in adolescents may be likened to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, according to researchers from UCLA.

The report suggests these drugs, known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, are true life-savers and are responsible for a significant reduction in the overall rate of suicide since they were introduced in the 1980s.

“Suicide rates rose steadily from 1960 to 1988 when Prozac (fluoxetine), the first SSRI drug, was introduced,” says study author Julio Licinio, M.D. “Since then, suicide rates have dropped precipitously, sliding from the eighth to the 11th leading cause of death in the United States.”

Dr. Licinio and his colleagues reviewed the medical literature on suicide and antidepressants, looking at all studies conducted between 1960 and 2004. In addition to finding a decline in the suicide rate since the introduction of SSRIs, they also found evidence suggesting most people who have committed suicide since then have not been treated with the drugs. Studies where blood samples of suicide victims were taken indicate less than 20 percent of people who took their own lives were on the medications.

The authors also offer a possible explanation for suicides among people who have just begun to take the drugs. Dr. Licinio says, “When people start antidepressant therapy, the first symptom to be alleviated is low energy, but the feeling that life isn’t worth living is the last to go.”

Researchers say careful monitoring is needed during the critical first months to ensure patients -- particularly children -- who previously might not have had the energy to act on suicidal feelings do not use their renewed energy in a negative way.

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SOURCE: Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 2005;4:165-170