Expanding the Suicide Warning to Young Adults

I warned the public and the health professions about the risk of SSRI antidepressant-induced suicidality in adults in Toxic Psychiatry (1991) and again in 1997 with a lengthy discussion in the first edition of this book. I elaborate in much greater detail on risk in 2003 in my scientific journal article Suicidality, Violence and Mania Caused by Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) A Review and Analysis.  

In the meantime, in 2001, Houston, Texas, attorney Andy Vickery won a product liability suit against GlaxoSmithKline in a Paxil murder-suicide suit (Tobin v. SmithKline Beecham, 2001). Donald Schell, age 60, had taken two doses of Paxil before shooting his wife, their daughter, and his granddaughter to death. The jury awarded 6.4 million to two surviving family members (Josefson, 2001). 

The FDA allowed the Paxil manufacturer to soft-pedal the findings by claiming, for example, that the results could be compounded by the fact that suicide is an aspect of psychiatric illnesses. This is nonsense— and every scientist knows it. Since both groups were depressed, and since they differed only in the substances they were given to take in the blinded trials, Paxil, and not depression, was the cause of this astronomical increase in the rate of suicidality. 

Note that this conclusion concerning antidepressants in general ignored the Paxil data published in May 2006 by GlaxoSmithKline indicating an increase in suicidality in all ages for adults suffering from Major Depressive Disorder. 

---