Children and teens taking antidepressants might be more likely to attempt, comple...( t treated with an antidepressant. More...),Health

t treated with an antidepressant. More specifically, children and adolescents who died from suicide (eight cases) were more likely to have been treated with an SSRI antidepressant than their matched controls (39 controls, 37.5 percent vs. 7.7 percent). Among adults age 19 to 64 years, however, treatment with antidepressants was not associated with either suicide attempts or suicide deaths.

The link between completed suicides and antidepressants in young patients was based on only eight cases, and it is possible that the sickest children were more likely to be treated with such medications, skewing the results, the authors write. "With these caveats in mind, the present findings are consistent with the recommendations for careful clinical monitoring during the treatment of depressed children and adolescents with antidepressant medications," they conclude. "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." (Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006;63:865-872. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)

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Contact: Craig LeMoult
212-305-0820
JAMA and Archives Journals
7-Aug-2006

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