Antidepressants help anxious, OCD, depressed kids

When you are clinically depressed you find it hard to even get up the energy to kill yourself. So the finding that suicide risks rise when people start antidepressant therapy has caused concern. There are also few clinical trials on children, so the prescription of drugs to kids that have been show safe and effective for adults has also caused concern. Now data on 5,310 children and teenagers from 27 studies show that for every 100 kids treated with antidepressants, about one additional child experienced worsening suicidal feelings above what would have happened without drug treatment. There were no suicides in the studies, just suicidal feelings. This shows that SSRIs are only safe for kids with anxiety, OCD and depression, but the placebo effect is still huge. About half of the depressed kids under 12 improved with a placebo, compared to 62% with Prozac.

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