Telegraph (UK), Jan. 27/16: "Antidepressants can raise the risk of suicide..."

This article has got my heart pounding! This information should be screamed from the rafters.

"Antidepressants can raise the risk of suicide, biggest ever review finds", states the title, followed by "Antidepressant use doubles the risk of suicide in under 18s and the risks to adults may have been seriously underestimated, researchers found".

There's so much to say about this one, but I'll let the article speak for itself for now. The unethical behaviour of the drug companies is mind-boggling.

Note the box at the bottom which discuss withdrawal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/12126146/Antidepressants-can-raise-the-risk-of-suicide-biggest-ever-review-finds.html

Here's a related article in the International Business Times:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/pharma-companies-blamed-bmj-study-showing-antidepressants-can-double-teen-suicide-risk-1540475

And the BMJ study can be found here:

http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i65

??!??

This is 2016 "news"?

It's news to lots of people who still think these meds are wonderful, or at the very least, benign. I know some of those people. Here on BB, people might know a tad more than the average person who walks into a doctor's office asking for a magic pill.

My point is that this finding has made the news for a very long time now, and look where we still are.  In fact, I remember it spoken about on the radio back in 2003 - that's *THIRTEEN* years ago!  (As an aside, at that time I mentioned it to my prescribing Dr. who brushed it off).   

Those people who still think these meds are wonderful or benign are either blindly listening to their doctors or television ads, are too lazy to hit one Google search, or they're burying their heads in the sand. 

This finding is hardly news in 2016. 

I don't know whether it's been published in any other medical journals over the years.  So acceptance into BMJ may really be the big news flash here. 

Here are a few important quotes from the published BMJ article that clarify what can be learned from this particular meta-analysis:

"Discussion"

"Systematic reviews of harms are needed for a balanced view of medical interventions, particularly to elucidate the occurrence of rare but serious events.34 Clinical study reports are far more reliable than published trial reports,2 4 28 but even using these we were unable to unravel the true number of serious harms. The trials had many shortcomings, in both the design and the reporting of the trials in the clinical study reports, and therefore our numbers are likely to be underestimates. The summary reports on Eli Lilly’s website were even more unreliable than we previously suspected.28 Only mortality had (almost) complete information."

"What is already known on this topic"

    "Important information on harms is often missing in published trial reports

    Clinical study reports should therefore be the preferred source for systematic reviews of drugs

    Antidepressants can increase the risk of suicide in children and adolescents"

"What this study adds"

    "Despite all the limitations we identified in the trials and in the clinical study reports, we found an increase in events of aggression with antidepressants (lost in adults alone), with a doubling of both suicidality and aggression in children and adolescents

    Selective reporting of relevant harms across the different sections of the clinical study reports meant that patient narratives, tables with individual patient listings (often found in appendices), and case report forms are needed for complete information

    Online summary reports of trials available from Eli Lilly’s website are inadequate as source documents for identifying harms data"

One other thought on the matter:

The more we see this type of information in the mainstream media, the better. The Telegraph is a major paper in the UK, and I'm glad to see that this study has garnered its attention. Obviously, the info hasn't reached many people -- including those who prescribe these medications without alerting unsuspecting patients of the potential harms.