Does Taking Antidepressants Lead to Suicide

Is there a relationship between suicidal thoughts and behaviors? This has been the topic of many debates in the treatment of depression. Recently some research on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, seems to have linked the increase of suicide with these drugs. While the research has not come out with a conclusive answer the FDA has mandated the manufactures of all antidepressants to include warnings alerting people of this possible side effect. These warnings have been controversial; psychiatrist Yvon D. Lapierre argues that the warnings will stop people from taking the medication they need while psychiatrist David Healy and statistician Chris Whitaker argue that the warnings are needed to bring awareness to the problem while more extensive research can be done.

Healy and Whitaker believe that studies have shown that people who take antidepressants are at a greater risk for committing suicidal acts. They site that when people who take antidepressants were compared to people taking placebo the rate of suicidal acts was greater in people taking antidepressants. When they looked at the rate of exposure over time of antidepressants they came to the conclusion that people who truly were afflicted had dropped out of the study. This lead to falsely reducing the rate of people taking the antidepressants compared to the people taking the placebo with relation to suicidal acts.

One study they analyzed suggested that zimelidine reduced suicidal thoughts in patients that had these tendencies before starting the drug therapy as compared other drug therapies. This study also found that compared to other drug therapies zimelidine increased suicidal tendencies in patients who did not have them before taking the drug therapy. While fluvoxamine was found to have a lower suicidal tendency rate comparatively. Healy and Whitaker discovered that the data that Lilly used to analyze fluvoxamine was from studies that were not intended to show an association of...