EDITOR, - Goran Isacsson and colleagues examined the use of various antidepressants among people who committed suicide and concluded that therapeutic failure may be a greater problem than toxicity.1 They state that they refrained from ranking different drugs, but this occurred in practice because the differences found were explained on the grounds of the weaker antidepressive effect of the newer drugs, moclobemide and mianserin. The basis for the authors' conclusion was that, despite their relatively low toxicity, both drugs were overrepresented in the people who had committed suicide compared with their use in general.

The rate of suicide in Finland …