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Suicide Rise Coincides With Drug's Decline

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The Washington Post

Published: September 6, 2007

WASHINGTON - Warnings four years ago that antidepressants were increasing suicidal behavior among young people caused a precipitous drop in the drugs' use - a drop that coincided with an unprecedented increase in suicides in that age group, a new study has found.

From 2003 to 2004, the suicide rate among Americans younger than 19 rose 14 percent, the most dramatic one-year change since the government started collecting suicide statistics in 1979, the study found. The rise followed a sharp decrease in the prescribing of antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil after parents and physicians were confronted by a barrage of warnings from the Food and Drug Administration and international agencies.

The data suggest that for every 20 percent decline in antidepressant use among patients of all ages in the United States, an additional 3,040 suicides per year would occur, said Robert Gibbons, a professor of biostatistics and psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who did the study. About 32,000 Americans commit suicide each year.

The new finding, published in the September issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, is the latest shoe to drop in a controversy spanning more than four years.

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