Should the FDA reconsider antidepressant boxed warnings?

The University of Cincinnati's Jeffrey Strawn, MD, spoke with Medscape about whether the Food and Drug Administration should reevaluate boxed warnings on antidepressants linking the medications to an increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors in young people.

The warnings have been in place for almost two decades, but evidence suggests they may have led to fewer depression diagnoses, reduced prescriptions and higher suicide rates.

Strawn said there was not as much data on the risks and benefits of antidepressants in youth when the warnings were instituted, but the current evidence suggests it's time to reevaluate the warnings. 

“I don’t think that they’ve been useful. They’ve actually been harmful,” Strawn, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience in UC’s College of Medicine and a UC Health child and adolescent psychiatrist, told Medscape Medical News. “These boxed warnings have decreased physicians’ and other clinicians’ comfort and tendency to prescribe.”

Read the Medscape article.

Featured photo at top of medication spilling out of a bottle with a warning symbol in the background. Photo/Arthit Pornpikanet/iStock.