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February 12, 2004
Negative side effects of antidepressants
To continue an earlier thread, it looks like antidepressants do in fact have an unpredictable and potentially dangerous effect on people, especially young, healthy people. Last weekend, a student in Indianapolis who was participating in testing of a new drug hanged herself in the lab's bathroom. As part of the drug trial, she was given a "larger than therapeutic dose" of duloxetine, which Eli Lilly is testing for use as an antidepressant. She was determined to be physically and mentally healthy, which makes me wonder why non-depressed people are being used to test the effects of an antidepressant drug. She had stopped taking the drug four days before killing herself, and the company says she wasn't showing any signs of suicidal thoughts or behavior.
Of course, the other 9,000 people who participated in studies of this drug are OK, so one suicide doesn't prove anything. But in light of the FDA's recent warnings that antidepressants can cause unpredictable and suidical behavior in young people, maybe we should consider a policy like the one adopted in the UK, that these drugs can't be given to depressed children, since they haven't been proven to help, and can cause dangerous effects in some of them.
