The 12-year-old web site lists 3,500 crime related news reports linked to the use of SSRI antidepressants with celebrities like Wynona Ryder, Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Anna Nicole Smith, Heather Locklear, Glen Campbell, Carrie Fisher, Sharon Osbourne, Phil Hartman, Princess Di’s driver, Patrick Swayze’s Sister, O.J. Simpson and the Crown Prince of Nepal generously sprinkled in.
Gabriel Myer’s death on April 15 roiled child advocates, critics of the pharmaceutical industry, the media. But this week, a child’s suicide finally elicited a reaction where it matters. “I tell you, we’re going to do something. We’re going to do a full-court press,” said Florida State Sen. Tony Hill, a Jacksonville Democrat, still shocked after members of the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee were briefed Wednesday by the Gabriel Myers Task Force.
A Danish study shows that the risk is greatest when moms-to-be take more than one selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant or switch SSRIs early in pregnancy. Babies born to women who had filled prescriptions for more than one SSRI had a fourfold increase in septal heart defects — a malformation of the wall that divides the left and right sides of the heart.
It is impossible to unpack all of the reasons for these prescriptions, but some industry critics say one reason could be the money doctors make from Forest. Psychiatrists make more money from drug makers than any other medical specialty, according to analyses of payment data. And Forest gives more money and food to doctors than many of its far larger rivals.
The FDA analysis by Dr. Marc Stone, Dr. Thomas Laughren and colleagues involved a review of data from eight drug makers on 372 clinical trials involving nearly 100,000 adults.
Overall, they found the risk of suicide was “strongly age-dependent,” with higher risks in people under 25, no difference among those 25 to 64, and lower risks in people 65 and older.