[junaid]

I don't know what the new hype is about. In medical school we were told that giving a severely depressed patient an anti-depressant may cause them to commit suicide. The theory was that these patients had suicidal thoughts, but did not act on them secondary to the lack of energy that accompanies depression. By giving the antidepressant, that lack of energy goes away, but the suicidal thoughts may not have gone away. This leads to the suicide attempts.

I thought all this recent news was a rehash of what was already out there.

[Al B.]

I don't know what the new hype is about. In medical school we were told that giving a severely depressed patient an anti-depressant may cause them to commit suicide.

That isn't the issue. If you are currently practicing medicine, you should know that.

The issue is drug-induced agitation (akathisia) and the real rates of drug-induced psyschosis. Just from reading the above article, it should be apparent to you that when you have twice the rate of suicidality from taking the active drug in placebo-controlled trials, there is something wrong. This is especially true considering that the trials were conducted by the drug companies themselves, with the inherent biases that produces.