FDA Links Happy Pills With Suicide

A few years ago, my grandmother's husband shot himself in the heart on the day after Christmas. He had been horribly depressed for quite some time and had recently been put on the prescription anti-depressant Paxil.

At the time, I thought that the incident was isolated and largely the result of a cultural miscommunication at the doctor-patient level, rather than a problem with the medication itself.

After all, the FDA would never approve a medication like Paxil for public use unless it was absolutely sure of its safety, right? I mean, even the Paxil web site has the FDA's official seal of approval to assure people of its safety.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Paxil for the treatment of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Now it seems that the FDA is waking up to the fact that medications like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft may actually contribute to teen suicides.

Federal regulators said for the first time yesterday that clinical trials of popular antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft show a greater risk of suicide among children taking the drugs compared with those taking dummy pills.

Although only one of these drugs has been approved for the treatment of children with depression, doctors are prescribing them to hundreds of thousands of American children every year. The new Food and Drug Administration analysis of the trials is starkly at odds with repeated assurances by the U.S. psychiatric establishment that the drugs are very safe.

Maybe I'm out of touch on this one, but doesn't it seem like the FDA got things bass-ackwards here?