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Bitter Pills They're prescribed to millions, but do the new antidepressants work? And are they worth the risk?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- The most commonly prescribed anti-depressants may be effective, but drug ads are misleading about how the drugs work, a new study suggests. The study, published in the December issue of the Public Library of Science Medicine, focuses on manufacturers that market the cutting-edge class of anti-depressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The study results add to the criticism of drug companies for allegedly filling the airwaves with slick but deceptive advertising on various medications. SSRIs can help relieve depression, but the medical evidence that they do so by correcting low levels of serotonin in...

"There is only one problem. "Not a single peer-reviewed article ... support[s] claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder," scientists write in the December issue of the journal PLoS Medicine. Indeed, a steady drip of studies have challenged the "serotonin did it" hypothesis."

"In the United States, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants are advertised directly to consumers [1]. These highly successful direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) campaigns have largely revolved around the claim that SSRIs correct a chemical imbalance caused by a lack of serotonin."

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated a new warning label be added to antidepressants more than a year ago, cautioning physicians to pay close attention to patients taking the drugs for signs of suicidal behavior. Now the agency issued its second (much stronger) warning, urging the monitoring of adults who use antidepressants for signs of suicidal thoughts and deepening depression.FDA's New AdvisoryThe new warning, which is applicable to children and adults, was in the wake of recent studies that linked suicidal behavior in adults to their use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed class of...

Efficacy of antidepressants in adults BMJ  2005;331:155-157 (16 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7509.155Joanna Moncrieff, senior lecturer in social and community psychiatry1, Irving Kirsch, professor of psychology2  1 Department of Mental Health Sciences, University College London, London W1N 8AA, 2 School of Health and Social work, University of Plymouth, PlymouthCorrespondence to: J Moncrieff j.moncrieff@ucl.ac.uk Most people with depression are initially treated with antidepressants. But how well do the data support their use, and should we reconsider our strategy?     Introduction TopIntroductionEfficacySeverity of depressionMethodological issues in...Effect of antidepressantsConclusionsReferences   The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently recommended that antidepressants, in particular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,...

The yearlong debate over whether antidepressant drugs increase the risk of suicide in some children may soon widen to include adults, as English and Canadian scientists are reporting findings from three new analyses of suicide risk in people over age 18 who have taken the medications. The new findings are mixed, and apparently contradictory, and likely to encourage both patient advocates who believe that antidepressants like Prozac have hidden dangers, and manufacturers who insist that the medications are safe, experts said. One of the reports, an analysis of data on antidepressants from previous studies, found that adults taking the drugs...

THE NATION Numbers have declined since a 1980s peak when such drugs came into use, a study finds. A skeptic says gun laws might be the cause. The U.S. suicide rate has fallen steadily since Prozac and related antidepressants came into use in the late 1980s, according to an analysis by researchers worried that evidence linking the drugs to suicide in children could reduce their use. The suicide rate, which reached a peak in 1988 of nearly 13 deaths per 100,000 people, fell steadily to about 10.5 in 2002. Most suicides are the result of untreated depression, not adverse reactions...

In the wake of a yearlong debate over the risks of antidepressants to minors, a new analysis of World Health Organization medical records has found that infants whose mothers take the drugs while pregnant may suffer withdrawal symptoms shortly after they are born. The study challenges the assurances that many doctors have long given pregnant women with depression that taking the drugs would not affect their babies. But experts said that the study, appearing today in the journal Lancet, was not definitive, and must be weighed against the benefits of drug treatment. Untreated maternal depression can also harm a developing...

Sharp Decrease Seen After Reports of Risks The number of American children taking antidepressant drugs fell sharply last year, after months of controversy over evidence that the medications increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior among some children. The steep decline among children is a dramatic reversal of a decade-long trend of soaring prescription rates for drugs such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, and the pattern of the data suggests the numbers could fall even further. Activists who had urged the Food and Drug Administration to require a black-box warning about the risks of the drugs said the drop...

I heard from two different sources in two days that there have been some reports that the army reservists working at Abu Graib were being prescribed anti-depressants because of the high stress of their jobs. Now I am not saying this is true, but I am asking if anyone here at FR has any contacts to find this kind of info out. I know in the case of those kids at Columbine, it took over a year for the info that those kids were on similar drugs to come out. It was all quashed because of doctor/patient confidentiality. I think...

CASES As a psychopharmacologist, I know that every patient responds slightly differently to medication. But it wasn't until I met Susan that I understood just how differently. She'd come to see me because she was depressed, and I'd successfully treated her with a course of Zoloft, a popular antidepressant. But as often happens, Susan's desire for sex had vanished along with her depressed mood. "I kind of miss it, but I feel really bad for my husband, who's getting very frustrated," she said. The sexual side effects of antidepressants like Zoloft and Prozac - the class of drugs known as...

LONDON, Dec. 20 - One year after British drug regulators advised against prescribing a new generation of antidepressants, except Prozac, for depressed adolescents, British doctors say they are in a frustrating bind. Warned away from using the antidepressants, they are recommending psychotherapy for their young patients instead. But under the British health system, depressed teenagers face a six- to nine-month waiting list for psychotherapy, a situation unlikely to improve in the short term. "On the ground, we feel very much abandoned," said Dr. Dick Churchill, a general practitioner and senior lecturer at Nottingham University. "The advice seems to be these...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Authorities say three years ago, Christopher Pittman, then 12, shot his grandparents as they slept because they had scolded him for fighting. But Christopher's father, Joe Pittman, thinks his son killed because his sense of right and wrong was clouded by the anti-depressant Zoloft. Joe Pittman spoke out against the drug in a Food and Drug Administration hearing early this year. The boy, who had threatened suicide, was put on the drug three weeks before the slayings, and his dose was doubled just two days earlier. Joe Pittman's hands shook as he read his son's confession...

Looking back, Mark and Cheryl Miller would have done a lot of things differently with their 13-year-old son, Matt. They probably would never have left Lenexa, Kan. They would have sent him to a different school, and they certainly would have chosen a different therapist. But most of all, they wouldn't have given him Zoloft. ''It's not a pleasant thing living with the thought that you had a hand in your son's death,'' Mark Miller told me recently. ''Making him take those pills was done out of love for Matt, but it was still the wrong thing to do.'' We...

After concluding that the use of antidepressants could increase thoughts of suicide among children and adolescents, the Food and Drug Administration said today that it was ordering manufacturers of all such drugs to post "black box" warnings on their products. A black box message is the most serious warning placed in the labeling of prescription medication, the F.D.A. said today. While the new labeling will not prohibit the use of antidepressants in children and adolescents, it warns of the risk of suicide and encourages doctors to balance that risk with the clinical needs of the patient. The warnings did not...

Do anti-depressants cause suicide in children? After simmering for over a year, the question boiled over this summer. A few weeks ago the makers of Paxil, one of a class of drugs called SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), agreed to settle with the attorney general of New York who had charged them with "concealing" evidence of harm. Last Thursday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held an oversight hearing on the safety of SSRIs. And now the Food and Drug Administration is considering bolstering warning labels on the drugs. The safety debate was stoked by a long-awaited FDA report....

Christopher Pittman said he remembered everything about that night in late 2001 when he killed his grandparents: the blood, the shotgun blasts, the voices urging him on, even the smoke detectors that screamed as he drove away from their rural South Carolina home after setting it on fire. "Something kept telling me to do it," he later told a forensic psychiatrist. Now, Christopher, who was 12 years old at the time of the killings, faces charges of first-degree murder. The decision by a local prosecutor to try him as an adult could send him to prison for life. While prosecutors...

A top government scientist who concluded last year that most antidepressants are too dangerous for children because of a suicide risk wrote in a memo this week that a new study confirms his findings. The official, Dr. Andrew D. Mosholder, a senior epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration who assesses the safety of medicines, found last year that 22 studies showed that children given antidepressants were nearly twice as likely to become suicidal as those given placebos. His bosses, however, strongly disagreed with his findings, kept his recommendations secret and initiated a new analysis. In his memo, dated Monday,...

Perhaps you recall the line from "Dr. Strangelove," Stanley Kubrick's film - now 40 years old - about nuclear war and fluoridation. "As human beings," Gen. Jack D. Ripper says to Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, "you and I need fresh pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids." Hard to imagine what General Ripper would have thought of the recent announcement by Britain's Environment Agency that it had found traces of the antidepressant drug Prozac in rivers and groundwater. The idea of someone dumping mood-altering pharmaceuticals into the water supply sounds suitably Strangelovian. But the source in this case is...