Post-Schna-ulations

More About Antidepressents in the Media

F.D.A. Links Drugs to Being Suicidal
The media pisses me off. If you were to look at the title of this article and not actually really read it, you would think that taking antidepressents would cause teenagers to commit suicide. However, in reading the article, it doesn't sound as if the article is claiming it is that black and white. Here are some of the facts from the article:

- The risk of suicide among patients given the pills is very small. If 100 children and teenagers are given antidepressants, 2 or 3 will become suicidal who otherwise would not have had they been given placebos, agency officials said. None of the children in the trials committed suicide, but some thought about or attempted suicide, researchers found.
- A large study of depressed teenagers conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health recently found that Prozac was far more effective in treating depression in children and teenagers than was talk therapy.
- Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers, trailing only homicide and accidents. Without treatment, many more teenagers will die, several experts said
- Then last year, GlaxoSmithKline announced that tests of Paxil had found that teenagers and children who took the pill were more likely to become suicidal than those given placebos. The announcement was quickly followed by a similar one from Wyeth, the maker of Effexor, another antidepressant.

Okay, so studies have shown (I'm saying this with full awareness of its limitations) that taking antidepressants can sometimes increase the likelihood that a teenager will commit suicide. However, does anyone stop to consider WHY? A point I was going to make, which I was happy to see is actually IN the article, is that often times a person does not commit suicide at their lowest point. At that point, there is usually a lot of apathy, lack of energy, despair. They don't care enough to kill themselves. It's only as people start to get better that they go through that period of being really low but actually having the energy and caring enough to do something about it. That's when most suicides occur.

But Dr. Temple speculated that some people taking the pills become suicidal because they are actually getting better. As their depression improves, he said, they gain the energy to act on suicidal thoughts that their illness had suppressed.

I don't mean to sound harsh or uncaring, and I understand that people want something or someone to blame when something terrible happens, like your child committing suicide. However, thinking like that displayed by this mother:

Mathy Milling Downing of Laytonsville, Md., whose 12-year-old daughter hanged herself in January, said: "Candace's death was entirely avoidable had we been given the appropriate warnings. "The blood of these children is on your hands.''

doesn't help anyone. However, I think many are reluctant to criticize a mother who has just lost her 12-year-old in such a manner (yeah, I'm the bitch who will do it I guess). Not only is it totally irrational thinking, but it's not going to give that mother any comfort, closure, or increased ability to move on beyond her grief. It gives her a place to put the blame, or a reason behind an act that borders on being unexplainable (if it was something good, it would be more likely to be attributed to God or Fate). Sometimes things happen that you can't prevent, prepare for, or explain.

posted by Schna @ 9:48 AM