Doctors Call: End Warning on Antidepressants or Risk Suicides

— -- Mental health experts are calling on the Food and Drug Administration to remove its most severe label – the so-called “black box warning” -- on all categories of antidepressants because it has been “highly correlated” with a more than 33 percent jump in suicide attempts over the last decade as doctors and patients who could benefit from the drugs have shied away from using them.

A June study published in the BMJ backs up previous research that shows a link between fears about the use of antidepressants and young people taking their lives.

The data is “startling,” said Dr. Gene Beresin, executive director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, which is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital.

“A black box warning means parents and doctors must be aware and monitor,” he told ABC News. “But that’s the next closest thing to prohibition."

Hear Dr. Eugene Beresin's podcast on the study results.

“If an infection, asthma, or heart condition increased 30 percent over the last decade, the public would go ballistic,” said Beresin. “The FDA would have been under massive attack from all sectors of the population if any other medical condition escalated in this manner. … Everyone would be scrambling to reduce any and all possible risk factors.”

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In 2003, the FDA reviewed clinical trial data on 2,200 children who had been treated with SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a widely prescribed class of antidepressants. It noted a 4 percent increase in “suicide thinking and behavior” among those aged 18 to 24 during the first two months of treatment.

In October 2004, the FDA issued its most serious warning on all categories of antidepressants, indicating a suicide risk in children and adolescents with major depressive disorders. In 2006, the warning was extended to young adults up to 25 and recommended that doctors “must balance this risk with the clinical need.”

But the FDA study was limited in scope, according to psychiatrist Beresin. One of the side effects of SSRIs is “a certain amount of agitated behavior, but there were no attempted suicides and no deaths.”

“Teens may be suicidal anyway -- that was worrisome,” he said. “But nobody died and nobody killed themselves."

Beresin and other mental health professionals have argued that the perceived risks of antidepressants elicited fear among parents and general practitioners, the doctors who typically first diagnose mental disorders. And they say many young people who could have benefited from the drugs went untreated.

Suicide rates have been rising steadily for five years, according to The American Foundation for the Prevention of Suicide. Rates among those 15-24 increased from 10.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2010, to 10.9 in 2011.

The foundation has opposed the FDA warning, urging a “more balanced approach” to the labeling. “The warning was very extreme given the data they were analyzing at the time," said its chief medical officer, Dr. Christine Moutier. "We have major problems with the way the FDA interpreted the data.”

“The sad thing about the black box warning has been the tremendous effort made in the last 15 to 20 years,” Moutier said of studies that showed a relationship between depression and elevated risk of heart attacks. “It was one of the pivotal findings on many impacts on the body. It started to validate it as a psychological illness and not just what happens when a person is thrown into stress.”

She said the study results showing a new increase in suicides as a result of FDA warnings are “a step backwards in terms of treatment of this common health condition.”

But the FDA stands firm on what it officially calls its "box warning." Agency spokeswoman Sandy Walsh said the label is “an important risk signal.

“The labels also say that ‘suicide is a known risk of depression and certain other psychiatric disorders, and these disorders themselves are the strongest predictors of suicide,’” she wrote ABC News in an email. “It should be emphasized that the warnings on the drugs do not say not to treat depression, they say suicidality is a risk in young people, and so the clinician should monitor the young patient when starting, or increasing the dose, of these drugs.”

“The warnings do not suggest avoiding the drugs,” said Walsh. “The FDA has not tried to discourage use of antidepressant drugs in people who may benefit from them. And, the current labeling and patient medication guides remind physicians and caregivers of the monitoring that is needed for patients taking these medications. The FDA has tried to balance the suicidality warning language with a reminder that depression is a serious illness that itself is the major risk factor for suicidal thoughts and actions.

“At this time nothing indicates a need for change in the boxed warning on these drugs, which urges attention to patients starting treatment, which the FDA feels is still good advice.”

The latest BMJ study was carried out by Harvard University’s Department of Population and Medicine and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. It analyzed data on more than 7 million patients in the U.S. Mental Health research network between 2000 and 2010.