Benefits of Antidepressants Outweigh Risk of Suicidal Behavior inAdolescents

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"We wanted to look at benefit and risk," says epidemiologist Jeffrey
Bridge of the Columbus Children's Research Institute, lead author of the
study, published online today by JAMA The Journal of the American
Medical Association. "The FDA should continue to monitor the safety of
these medications, [but] at some point we may want to revisit or
reconsider the black box warning."

Bridge and colleagues reviewed data from 27 published and unpublished
clinical trials in which patients younger than 19 years of age took
antidepressants for depression, anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD). All were randomized studies that compared the effects of placebos
with one of several medications, including the selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft as well as others, during
the first four months of treatment.

The team found no reported suicides, but 3 percent of those taking the
drugs reported suicidal behavior compared with 2 percent of those taking
a placebo. FDA researchers had found rates of 4 and 2 percent,
respectively.