Children should avoid anti-depressants
Now there’s a headline I never thought I’d see… The British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has formally determined what practitioners have known for quite a while: that children and anti-depressants should only be mixed in moderate to severe cases of depression. The risk of SSRIs leading to suicide and suicidal thoughts is relatively well-known given the civil suits against Pfizer (the makers of Zoloft) stemming from teenaged suicide allegedly triggered by the drug.
The determination by NICE went a step further and stated what I’ve known for quite a long time: that many of the folks on anti-depressant need therapy more than they need medication. In the UK, NICE has said that this doesn’t happen as often as it should due to a shortage of therapists. I suspect that this is one of the problems, but the other is that people simply don’t want to take the time out of their lives for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) when they could have a magic bullet that does almost as well. In the United States, this is certainly the case.
There are certainly legitimate cases where people need these medications, but nowhere near the numbers that actually take them. I believe that we have direct-to-consumer advertising and doctors and patients who simply don’t want to bother with therapy. I hope that this will change soon. Frankly, I expect that it will as insurance companies realize that while paying for therapy now is more expensive, they can save a fortune later in long-term drug costs when those people that only needed a little help are back on their feet, SSRI-free.
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