Warnings from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the dangers of teen antibiotic use may have actually increased suicide attempts in this age group.
Intense media coverage of the potential dangers of teen antidepressant use in 2003 caused a significant decline in the number of prescriptions written, a Harvard Medical School news release reported.
A new study shows that in the year following these warnings there was a 21.7 percent increase in suicide attempts by psychotropic drugs in young people; there was a 33.7 percent increase in suicide attempts in young adults.
"This study is a one of the first to directly measure a health outcome driven by the interaction of public policy and mass media," Christine Lu, HMS instructor in population medicine at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and lead author of the study, said in the news release. "The FDA, the media and physicians need to find better ways to work together to ensure that patients get the medication that they need, while still being protected from potential risks."
"This is an extraordinarily difficult public health problem, and if we don't get it right, it can backfire in serious ways," co-author Stephen Soumerai, HMS professor of population medicine at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, said in the news release.
A 2003 analysis suggested about one percent of adolescents and young adults who take antidepressants experience and increase in suicidal thoughts. This warning received a lot of media attention; many of the reports failed to mention the potential risk of under-treatment of depression.
The analysis also only looked at an increase in suicidal thoughts, and not behaviors or attempts.
"These drugs can save lives," Soumerai said. "The media concentrated more on the relatively small risk than on the significant upside."
The FDA later revised its warning, and recommended that physicians consider the risk of both prescribing medication and not.
"We need to do a better job of understanding and communicating the risks of taking-and not taking-medications," Lu said.
