Antidepressant Linked to Suicide Attempts

Adults taking the antidepressant drug paroxetine are at higher risk of attempting suicide according to a study in the British journal BMC Medicine.

The study of previous clinical data on paroxetine use adds the antidepressant to the list of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors that have been shown to increase suicidal tendencies in adult patients with depression, the article by BioMed Central said.

Ivar Aursnes and colleagues at the University of Oslo, Norway, reanalyzed data from 16 selected paroxetine trials. In the double-blind trials, patients diagnosed with depression had been randomly given either paroxetine or a placebo drug.

The results showed there were seven suicide attempts in the group on paroxetine, and only one among the patients on placebo.

Paroxetine has been shown to increase suicidal attempt rates in children and teenagers, but previous studies have failed to reach a conclusion regarding the effects of the drug on suicide attempt rates among adult patients.