Today’s news about antidepressants increasing chance of feeling suicidal for under 25s

 The Independent’s article on this is here.

The full British Medical Journal article is here.

Some points that may not be clear:

• If you have been prescribed an antidepressant then be sure to consult your doctor before changing how much you take. Stopping it suddenly can have unexpected bad effects.
• It would be easy to jump to the wrong conclusion, but in fact it may be absolutely right for a doctor to prescribe an antidepressant to someone under 25. The research simply emphasises the need for the mental state to be more frequently and carefully monitored than for someone over 25.
• This is not ‘new’ research. It is a clever and worthwhile analysis of several hundred previous research projects which involved nearly a hundred thousand patients. With this number of people involved we can assume the findings are reliable.

There are a couple of previous posts looking at whether or not medication has any place in treating mental illness. They are at Myth 2 : All I need is the right tablets and at Myth 3 : I don’t need tablets.

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