The Final Class Label on Suicidality in Children and Adolescents

The Final Class Label on Suicidality in Children and Adolescents 

The FDA published its final version of the class label for all antidepressants on January 26, 2005. The FDA applied the new label changes to all 34 antidepressants on the market, including older, more sedating antidepressants such as amoxapine (Asendin), trazodone (Desyrel), amitriptyline (Elavil), doxepin (Sinequan), and imipramine (Tofranil). The last-minute inclusion of the older antidepressant was an act of deference to the manufacturers of the newer antidepressants, in effect tarring all antidepressants with a brush meant only for the newer ones. 

However, the agency s conclusions were based on a limited number of new antidepressants, including bupropion, citalopram, fluoxetine, flu-voxamine, mirtazapine, nefazodone, paroxetine, sertraline, escitalopram, and venlafaxine, according to an FDA Talk Paper (2004a). These were the drugs most often cited by the public at the two FDA hearings. 

Although the labels are currently being updated by the FDA to include a warning about antidepressant-induced suicidality in young adults, every antidepressant label until recently had a black-box warning at the top titled Suicidality in Children and Adolescents that begins with the following statement  

Antidepressants increased the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in short-term studies in children and adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. 

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