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September 10, 2007Scared to death?Psychiatrists weighed in again on Sunday on how warnings about suicide risks may have scared parents and teens away from using antidepressant drugs - leading to recent spike in adolescent suicides. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's "black box" warnings on antidepressants were not recommended until late 2004, they were preceded by a series of public health warnings in both the United States and Europe. "Most of my patients remained on medication but it took a lot of discussion," Kraus said in a telephone interview. "The majority of kids that were on antidepressants did not have the luxury of having a child psychiatrist." Most pediatric antidepressant prescriptions are written by primary-care physicians and the warnings affected them as well, he said. "Pediatricians became very wary of this and many opted not to prescribe antidepressants anymore," Kraus said. The article also notes that trial lawyers "were almost advertising themselves" at the FDA hearings on antidepressant drug safety in 2004, perhaps leading primary care physicians to stop prescribing the drugs out of fear of lawsuits. Concludes Dr. David Fassler, from the University of Vermont: "If we saw an increase like this in the death rate for cancer in a single year, there'd be a public outcry." Indeed. Posted by Paul Howard at September 10, 2007 04:15 PM CommentsPost a comment |
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