TUESDAY, Oct. 8, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- "Black Box” warnings added to antidepressants might have contributed to an increase in suicide attempts and deaths among young people, a new evidence review claims. The warnings say that antidepressants might be associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children and teens, and were intended to prompt doctors to more closely monitor young people prescribed the drugs, researchers said.
Instead, the warnings caused doctors to think twice before prescribing antidepressants to youth, possibly prompting a decline in mental health among kids and teens, results show. “The sudden, simultaneous and sweeping effects of these warnings -- the reduction in depression treatment and increase in suicide -- are documented across 14 years of strong research,” said lead researcher Stephen Soumerai , a professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Pilgrim Health Care Institute. Since 2003, the U.
S. Food and Drug Administration has advised that antidepressants could be linked to suicidal thoughts and behaviors in young people. The FDA required that a Black Box warning be placed on antidepressants in 2005, notifying doctors of this possible effect in kids younger than 18.
In 2007, the FDA expanded the warning to include young adults up to age 24. To see how the warning might have affected treatment of depression, researchers analyzed the pooled data from 11 studies between 2003 and 2022. The data show that fewer than 5% of yo.