BMJ  2004;329:461 (21 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7463.461

Letter

Antidepressants and suicide

Rising prescription rate does not mean rising rate of new users

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The figures put forward in Gunnell and Ashby's paper on suicide rates and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, indicative of a rising prescription rate since the launch of these drugs, may be misleading, in that a rising prescription rate does not mean a rising rate of new users.¹ A formal model that translates prescriptions into patients, that we hope to submit for peer review later this year, indicates that the bulk of rising prescription rates stems not from an increasing number of new users but rather from an accumulating number of long term users of SSRIs.

This point is important in that the suicide risk with SSRIs has been linked primarily to the early weeks of treatment. If this is the case, then any increase in suicides from increasing use of SSRIs in Britain will have occurred in the years from 1989 through to . . . [Full text of this article]

North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, Hergest Unit, Ysbyty Gwynedd, North Wales LL57 2PW

healy_hergest@compuserve.com North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, Hergest Unit, Ysbyty Gwynedd, North Wales LL57 2PW

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Antidepressants and suicide: what is the balance of benefit and harm

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