Long-term administration of antidepressants in children show risk for the development of bipolar disorder
It is well established that antidepressants can induce manic episodes in adults, and naturally they have this effect on children, too. As early as 1992, when the prescribing of SSRIs to children was just getting started, University of Pittsburgh researchers reported that 23 percent of boys eight to nineteen years old treated with Prozac developed mania or manic-like symptoms, and another 19 percent developed “drug-induced” hostility. In Eli Lilly’s first study of Prozac for depression, 6 percent of the children treated with the drug suffered a manic episode; none in the placebo group did. Luvox, meanwhile, was reported to cause a 4 percent rate of mania in children under 18. In 2004, Yale University researchers assessed this risk of antidepressant-induced mania in young and old, and they found that it is highest in those under thirteen years of age.
The incidence rates just cited are from short-term trials; the risk rises when children and teenagers stay on antidepressants for extended periods. In 1995, Harvard psychiatrists determined that 25 percent of children and adolescents diagnosed with depression convert to bipolar disorder within two to four years. “Antidepressant treatment may well induce switching into mania, rapid cycling or affective instability in the young, as it almost certainly does in adults,” they explained. Washington University’s Barbara Geller extended the follow-up period to ten years, and in her study, nearly half of prepubertal children treated for depression ended up bipolar.
The symptoms of stimulant treatment for ADHD closely resemble those of bipolar disorder, and juvenile bipolar disorder first arose in tandem with stimulant and antidepressant treatment in children. These findings give us our second mathematical equation for solving the bipolar epidemic: If 2 million children and adolescents are treated with SSRIs for depression, this practice will create 500,000 to 1 million bipolar youth. We now have numbers that tell of an iatrogenic epidemic: 400,000 bipolar children arriving via the ADHD doorway, and at least another half million through the antidepressant doorway.
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2010). Anatomy of an Epidemic Chapter 11 The Epidemic Spreads to Children (Epub p. 323). New York , NY: Crown Publishing.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychiatry / Pharmacology / Biology / Neuroscience / Biochemistry / Neurochemistry Status:☀️