Antidepressants Likely To Make The Young More Prone To Violence, Says Researchers

While researchers didn’t find a significant link between adults taking SSRIs and violent crime convictions, young people aged 15-24 were 43% more likely to commit violent crimes while on antidepressants.

As Reuter notes, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a class of widely prescribed drugs, including fluoxetine (Prozac, Eli Lilly) and paroxetine (Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline), which are created to ease the symptoms of anxiety and depression. New research suggests their use is modestly associated with violent crime among some age sectors.

They are prescribed to millions of Brits every year. A 2010 PLOS One study that used data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that SSRI use was associated with increased violence, for example, while a study published the same year in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management reported exactly the opposite.

A number of legal cases have linked the drugs with violent behaviour, but
until now research evidence has been inconclusive.

The findings pointed at young people being more prone to alcoholism, along with being more active in violent arrests, non-violent convictions, and enduring injuries.

The same group of Australian researchers also found in a separate study that mothers are more likely to experience bleeding after giving birth if they were treated with SSRIs.

In other words, use of current SSRI antidepressant medications for young patients may still be indicated if the risks are calculated and providers and patients warned of the potential side-effects. Researchers found that of the 856,493 individuals (10% of the Swedish population) who were prescribed SSRIs, 8,377 individuals (1%) were convicted of a violent crime.

For older participants, the association was not statistically significant.

The authors, led by Seena Fazel, from Oxford University, stressed that their results did not prove a causal link between SSRIs and violent crime. The increase in risk was essentially the same when the researchers factored in the influence of other psychotropic drugs. He added, however, that if the results are confirmed in further studies, “warnings about the increased risk of violent behavior among young people taking SSRIs might be needed”.

“Any such changes to the advice given to young persons prescribed SSRIs will need to be carefully considered, as the public health benefit from
decreases in violence following restrictions in SSRI use may be countered by increases in other adverse outcomes (such as more disability,
re-hospitalisation, or suicides)”.