Source: http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/news/ ... lence.html
September 12th, 2006
"Antidepressants Associated with Increase of Violence"
Some antidepressants that have been associated with increasing the risk of suicide may now also be linked to violence, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that patients using the antidepressant Paxil, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, were two times more likely to experience a “hostility event” than those who took a placebo.
Paxil is one of many newer antidepressants that belong in a class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Prozac, Zoloft, and Lexipro are also SSRIs drugs.
These drugs came under scrutiny in 2004, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found there was an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and adolescents taking the antidepressants. The FDA ordered stronger label warnings on many SSRIs drugs and advised close monitoring of adults taking the medication.
In the new study testing the rate of violence among patients using SSRIs drugs, researchers David Healy, David Menkes, and Andrew Herxheimer evaluated a GlaxoSmithKline report on Paxil including a number of legal cases and e-mails from nearly 1,400 patients who responded to a British T.V. program about the topic.
The study, published in the online journal Public Library of Science-Medicine, found that 60 out of 9,219 patients who used Paxil experienced some type of violent event compared to only 20 out of 6,455 who were given a placebo pill.
“The new issues highlighted by these cases need urgent examination jointly by jurists and psychiatrists in all countries where antidepressants are widely used,” wrote the researchers.
“When violence is a suspected outcome, every case has to be considered carefully, on the principle that individuals are responsible for their conduct, unless there is clear evidence of compromised function that cannot be otherwise explained.”
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