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Editor: Robert Binstock
Profession: Paxil Side Effect Attorney

Category: Paxil Suicide

Warnings issued four years ago that antidepressants such as Paxil, were responsible for the increase in suicidal behavior amongst young people, caused a dramatic drop in antidepressant use, which ultimately lead to an increase in suicides in that age group, according to a new study.

The suicide rates among Americans younger than 19-years-old, increased 14 percent, the largest one-year change during 2003 to 2004, since the government began collected suicide statistics in 1979. The increase followed an abrupt decrease in the prescribing of antidepressants such as Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft.

The data suggest that for every 20 percent decline in antidepressant use among patients of all ages, an additional 3,040 suicides per year would occur, said Robert Gibbons, a professor of biostatistics and psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who did the study.