Suicide risks are likely to increase as a side effect if higher doses of antidepressants are prescribed for teens and young adults, according to CBS News.
A new research suggests that when prescribing antidepressants for children and teens, doctors should not start with higher doses, even if symptoms are more severe, as the risk of side effects are likely to increase.
The study found that younger patients who began their treatment with higher-than-recommended doses of antidepressants were more than twice as likely to try to harm themselves during the first 90 days of treatment as those who were initially treated with the same drugs at lower recommended doses.
The research, which was published online in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on April 28, has brought attention back to the ongoing debate of whether or not it's safe to prescribe antidepressants to children and teens.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had reportedly issued a public warning back in 2004 about the risk of suicide in kids and teens treated with antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
Recent research had shut down those ideas as a review that was published in 2007 in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that the benefits of taking antidepressants outweighed the potential harms to children and young adults.
Dr. Matthew Miller of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston was involved in the recent study that brought the debate back into light.
Miller and his colleagues analyzed data from 162,625 people aged 10 to 64 with depression who started antidepressant treatment with an SSRI at the most prescribed doses or at higher than average doses from 1998 to 2010.
The specifics of the study detailed that this increased rate of risk corresponds to about one additional event of suicide or other forms of self-harm for every 150 patients treated with high-does therapy, reports UPI.
There was no difference in risk for suicidal behavior as a side effect of antidepressants in adults ages 24 to 65.
Authors of the study wrote that although "dose is generally unrelated to the therapeutic efficacy of antidepressants, our findings offer clinicians an additional incentive to avoid initiating pharmacotherapy at high-therapeutic doses and to monitor all patients starting antidepressants, especially youth, for several months and regardless of history of deliberate self-harm."
