http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-06-01-depression-fda_N.htm?obref=obinsite
Interesting to say the least, perhaps some of the DR's found they had a conscience after all.
A persistent decline in the rate of Americans, especially children, newly diagnosed with depression followed the first federal warning on risks connected with antidepressant drugs, a study suggests.
In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration first warned about the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in young people taking the drugs. That action may have helped reverse a five-year trend of rising rates of diagnosis for depression, the researchers found.
The findings, published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, are based on an analysis of eight years of data from nearly 100 managed care plans and more than 55 million patients.
It was already known that antidepressant use among young people had fallen since the drugs began carrying a so-called "black box" warning about risks. But the data showing an extended decline in the level of depression diagnoses are new.
In some cases, untreated depression can be more dangerous than suicidal feelings when starting antidepressants and a spike in teenage suicides in 2004 worried some experts that could be another unintended result of the FDA warnings. Then, teen suicides fell slightly the following year, offering hope that the suicide increase was just a blip
