Prozac and Suicide

The SSRI Prozac has been linked with suicide, suicidal ideation and violence in children and teenagers. Prozac belongs to a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which increase the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin that is absorbed by receptors in the brain. Depression has been linked to an imbalance of neurotransmitters, chemicals that allow nerve cells in the brain to communicate. By regulating the flow of serotonin, drugs like Prozac have been shown to alleviate many of the debilitating symptoms of depression and allow sufferers to function normally with few adverse reactions.

On March 4, 1993, two weeks after starting to take Prozac, William Forsyth stabbed his wife 15 times as she lay in bed, and then leaned on the knife to kill himself and commit suicide. Reginald Payne, 63, a teacher in Great Britain, suffocated his wife and cthrew himself off a cliff, committing suicide, in March 1996, after having taking Prozac for just 11 days.

Prozac Suicide Documents Are Damning

The documents discovered about PROZAC are particularly revealing:

1. Three years before PROZAC received approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a similar agency in Germany had such serious reservations about Prozac's safety that it refused to approve the antidepressant. Eli Lilly's studies showed that previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug had a five-fold higher rate of suicide and suicide attempts than those on older antidepressants, and a three-fold higher rate than those taking placebos.

2. Lilly's own figures indicate that one in 100 previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug in early clinical trials developed akathisia, causing them to attempt or commit suicide during the studies.

It has also been discovered that the patent for a new version of Prozac, which Eli Lilly paid $90 million to acquire, states that the new formulation would reduce "the usual adverse effects" of the original Prozac, including "nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, inner restlessness (akathisia), suicidal thoughts, self-mutilation, manic behavior."

Prozac was introduced by Eli Lilly to the U.S. market in January, 1988. Some 45,000 reports of adverse reactions to Prozac have been filed with the FDA. These include reports of about 2500 deaths, with the large majority linked to suicide or violence.

Physicians Report Prozac Suicidal Reactions

Dr. Martin Teicher of Harvard Medical School reported in 1990 that he and his colleagues had observed suicidal thoughts in six patients who were taking Prozac. More recently, Dr. David Healy, an expert on the brain's serotonin system and the director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales, estimated that "probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated."

Meanwhile, the drug companies continue to rely on a 1991 finding from an FDA advisory panel that "there is no credible evidence of a causal link between the use of antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, and suicidality or violent behaviour."

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