United States: A new study already suggests that “Black Box” warnings on antidepressants might have led to more suicide attempts and deaths among young people.
These warnings say that antidepressants can sometimes make kids and teens think about suicide or act on those thoughts. They were added to help doctors pay more attention to young people taking these medicines.
As reported by the HealthDay, However, the warnings raised doubts among doctors about prescribing antidepressants to youth, as it possibly led to a worsening of the mental health among children and adolescents, statistic signifies.
“Such warnings with such drastic cut on the depression treatment and a boost to the suicide cases are well documented for the 14 years of robust research,” Soumerai said.
From the year 2003 up to date, the U.S Food and Drug Administration has been warning its citizens that antidepressants might lead to suicidal thoughts and actions in the youths.
This was after the FDA demanded that Black Box caution regarding this side effect of antidepressants had to be posted to doctors in 2005, about its possibility in children below 18 years of age. In 2007 the FDA broadened the warning to embrace users up to 24 years of age.
To examine how the warned might have impacted the treatment of the depression, authors sought the pooled data of 11 studies from the year, 2003 to 2022.
According to the information presented here the warning was followed by less than 5 % of young patients with the recommendations to monitor suicidal thoughts and behaviours. This rate was the same before and after the FDA instructed the warning to be printed on the packaging.
In contrast, seven of the studies reported that antidepressant treatment and use fell by between 20 and 50 percent during that period.
Other studies too revealed that the usage of antidepressants rose each year prior to the black box warning and then fell precipitously and sharply every year subsequent to these warnings.”
The harms persisting without witnessing any benefits post the Black Box warnings cannot be a coincidence,” Soumerai explained in the Harvard news release. According to the recommendations from the study, we suggest that FDA should consider placing the Black Box warnings among the standard set of warnings that present minimal risk to the health of the patients or even completely eliminate them.