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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Doctors know people who are depressed are at higher risk of suicide. But recent studies have linked drugs aimed at treating depression to an increased incidence of suicide, at least in children and adolescents.
Finding the right balance between treating depression and preventing suicide requires a better understanding of who is really at risk for antidepressant-related suicide, and that was the key objective of a new study led by researchers from New York and Pennsylvania.
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Their conclusion: Antidepressants do raise the risk of suicide among depressed kids. But they don't appear to have the same effect on depressed adults.
The authors looked at Medicaid records of nearly 5,500 children and adults who had been in the hospital at least once for treatment of depression. Kids with severe depression were about 1.5-times more likely to attempt suicide if they took antidepressants. These kids were also significantly more likely to successfully kill themselves. The link was especially strong for those on antidepressants known as SSRIs.
Adults on antidepressants, however, showed no increased risk for either attempted suicide or successful completion of suicide, leading the authors to conclude, "In these high-risk patients, antidepressant drug treatment does not seem to be related to suicide attempts and death in adults but might be related in children and adolescents."
They suggest doctors who do prescribe antidepressants for their young patients remain on constant alert for anything that might suggest the children are contemplating taking their own lives. "These findings support careful clinical monitoring during antidepressant drug treatment of severely depressed young people," they write.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, 2006;63:865-872
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