Scientists questioning the effects of anti-depressants

When teens in the United States feel the need to do something about depression, many turn to a… When teens in the United States feel the need to do something about depression, many turn to a class of prescription anti-depressant medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which, for the past 15 years, have been the most widely prescribed drugs for depression.

Through television commercials and print ads, the American public has become familiar with SSRI names like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Lexapro, and Celexa.

But questions have been raised in recent years by government health agencies from Washington to London about the effectiveness, and even possible dangers, of this class of drugs for adolescents and teen-agers who take them.

The question of whether they should be used by people younger than 18 has been met with a recent hard-line stance from the United Kingdom where, from June through December of 2003, the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the British equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, banned all of the above named SSRI drugs except Prozac. The agency cited study results showing that not only were such drugs not beneficial to children, but that young people taking these SSRIs were twice as likely to commit suicide, at a rate of 3.2 percent, compared to non-users, at 1.5 percent.

Since the fall of 2002, the FDA has investigated the side effects of Paxil, resulting in a series of subsequent warnings to doctors. In July 2003, the FDA cautioned doctors about prescribing the drug to young people, due to a possible increase in suicidal thinking. In October, they found that all the above named SSRIs, except Prozac, were no better than a placebo, at treating depression in young people.

SSRIs make serotonin more available to receptors in the brain by blocking its re-uptake.

Prozac is currently the only SSRI that has received official FDA approval for the treatment of adolescents and teen-agers, largely because Prozac has had two positive studies published by its makers in that area