Between 1988 and 1992, when Prozac was scarcely being prescribed to children, reports accumulated of more than 90 children and adolescents who suffered suicidal or violent self-destructive behavior while on the drug. Examples of reports to the FDA include that of a 12-year-old who suffered hostility and confusion, was violent and became “glassy-eyed” on the drug. An 18-year-old was hospitalized after being on Prozac for 270 days and had reportedly sexually assaulted and stabbed a store clerk. One 16-year-old, who had been on the drug for 50 days, reported hostility, psychotic depression and hallucinations—symptoms which did not exist prior to taking the drug.
As far back as February 1990, a published study by a team headed by Harvard Medical School’s Martin H. Teicher, M.D., found that “six depressed patients free of recent serious suicidal ideation developed intense, violent suicidal preoccupation after 2 - 7 weeks of fluoxetine treatment.”
Another team of physicians, from the State University of New York Health Science Center, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in February 1991 that individuals with no history of suicidal thoughts or actions developed suicidal thoughts after taking fluoxetine. One man was started on a 20-milligram daily dose of fluoxetine and, according to the doctors, “Three days later he had violent suicidal thoughts and tried to hang himself with a rope. The fluoxetine was discontinued, with complete disappearance of suicidal ideation four days later.”
Likewise, this second team reported, a woman developed akathisia—a state of drug-induced insanity characterized by extreme agitation and, sometimes, acts of violence—as well as recurrent suicidal thoughts after starting on fluoxetine. The symptoms resolved after she stopped taking the drug.
“Neither of our patients had a diagnosable personality disorder or history of suicidal ideation, gestures, mania or hypomania,” they wrote. “In our patients, the temporal association of suicidal ideation with the initiation of fluoxetine and its rapid disappearance within a week of discontinuing treatment strongly suggest that fluoxetine can induce suicidal ideation....”
Reserch study
Posted - 05/27/2005 : 17:37:45
