By Alexander Toldt According to the findings of a current study, the suicide rate among American teens was lower in 2005. Except 2004, when researchers observed an 18% increase, the suicide rate among US adolescents had been falling constantly over the...

According to the findings of a current study, the suicide rate among American teens was lower in 2005. Except 2004, when researchers observed an 18% increase, the suicide rate among U.S. adolescents had been falling constantly over the previous 10 years.

The 2004 increase was regarded by specialists as an anomaly and was mainly caused by a governmental warning about antidepressant. The warning made numerous patients stop taking the pills and this led to more suicides that year.

In 2003, widespread ad campaigns linked antidepressants, such as Prozac and Zoloft, to suicidal thoughts in youngsters. In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration imposed the measure under which the drugs must carry a "black box" warning and this caused prescriptions to fall about 20%.

However, researchers warned that, despite the fact that the suicide rate has dropped steadily over the past decade, the trend is still upward. The researchers studied data on suicide cases among teens over a 15-year period. The conclusion was that suicide rates in youngsters aged between 10 and 19 were higher than expected in 2004 and 2005 compared to the suicide rates from 1996 to 2003.

"This is significant, because pediatric suicide rates in the U.S. had been declining steadily for a decade until 2004,” said Jeff Bridge, from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He added that there might be a possibility of “an...
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