Antidepressants proven to INCREASE risk of suicide in teens

Thursday, October 06, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: antidepressants, suicide risk, teenagers

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(NaturalNews) Children and younger adults who begin antidepressant therapy at high doses instead of the "modal" (average or typical) prescribed doses are likely to be at greater risk of suicidal behavior during the first 90 days of therapy and treatment, researchers say.

An earlier meta-analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of antidepressant drug trials indicated that children who take antidepressants had twice the rate of suicidal ideations and behaviors than children who only took a placebo, Medical Express reported.

The authors of the new study set out to analyze suicidal behavior and antidepressant dosage, and see if the risk depended on a patient's age.

As noted by Medical Express:

The study used data from 162,625 people (between the ages of 10 to 64 years) with depression who started antidepressant treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor at modal (the most prescribed doses on average) or at higher than modal doses from 1998 through 2010.

The rate of suicidal behavior (deliberate self-harm or DSH) among children and adults (24 years or younger) who started antidepressant therapy at high doses was about twice as high compared with a matched group of patients who received generally prescribed doses.

'Additional incentive to avoid initiating pharmacotherapy at high-therapeutic doses'

The authors of the new study suggest that that corresponds with at least one additional event of DSH per 150 patents who were treated with high-dose anti-depressant therapy. For adults ranging from 25 to 64 years of age, the risk difference for suicidal behavior was negligible. The study did not address why higher doses might be responsible for additional suicide risk.

"Considered in light of recent meta-analyses concluding that the efficacy of antidepressant therapy for youth seems to be modest, and separate evidence that dose is generally unrelated to the therapeutic efficacy of antidepressants, our findings offer clinicians an additional incentive to avoid initiating pharmacotherapy at high-therapeutic doses and to monitor all patients starting antidepressants, especially youth, for several months and regardless of history of DSH," Matthew Miller, M.D., Sc.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues wrote in JAMA Internal Medicine.

David A. Brent, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Robert Gibbons, Ph.D., of the University of Chicago, said in related commentary, "In summary Miller et al are to be commended on a thoughtful and careful analysis of the effects of initiating antidepressants at higher than modal doses."

Continuing, they wrote: "Their findings suggest that higher than modal initial dosing leads to an increased risk for DSH and adds further support to current clinical recommendations to begin treatment with lower antidepressant doses. While initiation at higher than modal doses of antidepressants may be deleterious, this study does not address the effect of dose escalation."

High rates of antidepressant use has causal link to school mass murders

"Moreover, while definitive studies on the impact of dose escalation in the face of nonresponse remain to be done, there are promising studies that suggest in certain subgroups, dose escalation can be of benefit," they added. "Finally it should be noted that in this study, there was no pre-exposure to post-exposure increase in suicidal behavior after the initiation of antidepressants in youth treated at the modal dosage."

Now, if only researchers will examine the link between high doses of antidepressants among children and ideations of mass murder-suicide, that would produce some actionable data that could be used to reduce the number of school shootings and other large-scale killings among both children and young adults. In every case in recent years of mass murder, the shooters have been on elevated doses of mind- and mood-altering psychotropic drugs like Paxil, Ambien and others.

As Natural News has reported, overprescribing these drugs is also a problem in the U.S. military: Click here for more.

Sources:

http://medicalxpress.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.usatoday.com