re: #400 iceweasel

Right. But also, the depressive often already has thoughts about suicide, before he gets the medication, but he hasn’t moved into suicidal ideation. So he’ll have thoughts like “I wish I were dead” or “Everyone would be happier if I weren’t around”, or even ideas about how to kill himself…but that’s still a far cry from suicidal ideation, where they’re planning means and methods and actually taking steps. (Buying the gun, the rope, stockpiling the pills, giving away possessions).

In some people, especially teenagers, taking anti-depressants has the opposite of the intended effect on their brian chemistry (just like taking anti-psychotics if you’re not a psychotic makes you psychotic). So the depressive fixation on the idea of suicide kind of speeds up and intensifies.

That’s why there have been lawsuits about some of this and why there are those warnings— especially when prescribed for adolescents.

I discovered, from an experience of an acquaintance of mine, that teens are frequently misdiagnosed and given antidepressive drugs when the real problem is something else. And that combination of things, failure to treat the real problem and improper treatment for a non-existent depression, causes a lot of brain-chemistry problems in teens that would not necessarily be created in an adult.