I found this on WebMD and thought I would post it for anyone interested.
Have a great Day,
Cindy
What about Those Suicide Reports?
Copied from WebMD-All bout Prozac
http://my.webmd.com/content/dmk/dmk_article_5963107
"There's an ongoing controversy about whether Prozac causes people to try to kill themselves, or whether suicide attempts by users of Prozac are the result of the depression itself.
Studies have shown that at the beginning of treatment, 10 percent to 15 percent of patients feel more anxious after taking Prozac, but this anxiety eventually passes.
There also have been reports of anger and irritability among users of Prozac. Very irritable patients usually find their temperaments improving on Prozac, but it's a different story with manic-depressives. If manic highs involve anger, paranoia, or irritability and you take Prozac without first being stabilized on lithium, the manic side of your mood may break through and you could experience these symptoms. Many scientists believe that Prozac may initially increase manic symptoms because the drug increases a person's energy before it has successfully altered mood. This could suddenly prompt a suicide attempt in someone who had previously been too lethargic to make the effort. Indeed, several studies have suggested that people who are slowed down by depression in this way do appear to have a temporary increased risk of suicide as the depression eases.
Prozac experienced a temporary backlash in 1990 after reports circulated that it induced violent and suicidal tendencies in some users; the Church of Scientology led the attack against the drug, which focused on a small group of patients who had suicidal or violent thoughts.
In 1990 the church filed a citizen's petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asking that Prozac be withdrawn from the market, citing a Harvard Medical School study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry stating that 6 out of 172 high-risk mental patients who had been resistant to other drugs had become preoccupied with violent suicidal thoughts while on Prozac. Two of them tried unsuccessfully to kill themselves. Although none of the six had appeared to be suicidal when they started taking Prozac, five had had suicidal thoughts before. At the time, four of the six were also taking other medications (one was taking five other drugs).
The Scientologists took that study's findings of the six individuals and extrapolated them to the entire United States population, claiming that 140,000 people in the United States have become violent and suicidal on Prozac and charging that widespread use of Prozac would promote waves of violence. They backed up this claim by pointing to mass murderer Joseph Wesbecker, who killed himself and eight coworkers at a printing plant in Louisville, Kentucky, with an AK-47 assault rifle. A Scientology group alleged that Wesbecker, who they said had no history of violence, went berserk because he took Prozac. Subsequent media reports revealed Wesbecker had a large gun collection, had tried to kill himself 12 times in the past, and had often talked about killing his employers.
Because so many depressed people are also suicidal, the fact that a few severely depressed patients taking antidepressants became suicidal didn't surprise researchers. The FDA was concerned, however, because Prozac affects serotonin, a neurotransmitter known to be linked with aggression. After further study, however, in 1991 the FDA rejected the petition, reaffirming Prozac's safety. This decision was followed two months later by a unanimous announcement by the FDA advisory committee and an independent scientific advisory committee that Prozac and other antidepressants do not cause violence or suicidal behavior, and that Prozac, on the contrary, appears to guard against violent behavior. The announcement included the information that large-scale studies show that people taking Prozac are less suicidal than those taking a placebo or other antidepressant drugs. This affirmation of support was backed by the National Mental Health Association and the American Psychiatric Association.
The research the groups relied on included an extremely large comparison of 3,065 patients on anti-depressants published in the British Medical Journal. The study found no evidence of increased suicide risk or suicidal thoughts in people taking Prozac or tricyclics. In the study, Prozac caused fewer substantial suicidal thoughts than did tricyclics or placebo. Of those people who did have suicidal thoughts when they started taking the drugs, those given a placebo had the highest increase in those thoughts, with Prozac showing the least increase (17.9 percent for placebo, 16.3 percent for tricyclics and 15.3 percent for Prozac). Most patients taking Prozac and tricyclics experienced a decrease in suicidal thoughts (about 72 percent).
By January 1994, 78 suits against Eli Lilly (Prozac's manufacturers) had been dismissed and 160 others had been filed, charging that Prozac causes everything from rashes to violent death.
"When I first went on Prozac, it was in the early days when everyone was talking about suicide and this drug," Marie says. "I was somewhat concerned about that. My friends asked me if I was sure I knew what I was doing."
Indeed, despite the suits and bad publicity, the popularity of this drug never declined; Lilly's Prozac sales haven't had a bad year since the drug was released in 1987. In 1993, sales reached $1.2 billion worldwide ($880 million in the United States alone), surpassing the sales of all previously used antidepressants around the world. Sales are expected to increase another 12 percent in 1994.
As we've seen from the above discussion, if you're depressed, it's possible you might have some suicidal thoughts; between 40 and 60 percent of people with major depression do. Tell your doctor immediately if you start feeling self-destructive."