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Editor: Robert Binstock
Profession: Paxil Side Effect Attorney

Category: Paxil Suicide

Over the past couple of weeks there has been a great deal of attention paid to the news that youth suicide rates increased after antidepressant prescription decreased. As it turns out this story may not be all that we thought it was. It seems that the study posted in the September issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry may have been influenced by drug makers to make it appear as if there was conclusive evidence of a link between a decrease in antidepressant use by youth and an increase in suicide rates among the same group.

A new story may have uncovered a gaping hole in the original claim of this link. Experts have been quoted to say that while there was a significant increase in the suicides between 2003 and 2004, the period cited by the AJP article; however, the number of antidepressant prescriptions did not really decline during this time. The rapid drop-off in youth prescriptions to drugs like Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, and Celexa did not occur until the following year.

Since suicide rates for 2005 are not yet available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no evidence of a connection between variations in youth suicide rates and antidepressant prescription usage. Furthermore, experts say that trends in suicide rates, like any epidemiological data, have to be looked at over the long term and a one-year variation in rates could be a statistical artifact, or mean something else entirely.

The actual issue here is who would benefit from there being a link of this nature established. That would of course be the manufacturers of the antidepressants that took such a big hit when the initial black box warnings came out for their drugs. In fact pharmaceutical giant Pfizer contributed $30,000 to data collection in the study posted in the AJP. In addition the lead authors of the study have been on the payroll of large drug companies more than a couple times in the past.

So until more evidence is available we should not jump to conclusions and throw our children on Paxil. This just reinforced the old proverb, "You can't believe everything you read."