A sharp jump in suicide rates among young Americans has left researchers puzzled as to the cause and wondering what lessons to draw from it. Some researchers are even suggesting that regulatory warnings about the safety of antidepressant drugs might have triggered the problem, leading doctors and their patients to shun potentially life-saving medications.
The new findings on suicide rates among 10- to 24-year-olds, reported yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a startling reversal. From 1990 to 2003, the rate fell by more than 28 percent, from 9.48 to 6.78 suicides per 100,000 young people. From 2003 to 2004, the rate jumped back up to 7.32 per 100,000, an increase of 8 percent, the largest single-year rise in 15 years. Whether this is a short-lived increase or the start of a long-term upward trend is not yet clear.
Fair-balance – I am a pharmaceutical sales rep.
When the FDA put the Black Box warning on all anti-depressants, many doctors felt they had to stop or face lawsuits if a patient committed suicide. I was selling Effexor XR at the time. The efficacy of antidepressants as a class is poor. You are lucky if 30% of the patients will improve. That, coupled with the 4-6 week lag before your body’s chemistry catches up, leads to poor patient compliance. When a medicine does not give immediate results, the patient says “It doesn’t work”. Now, put those thoughts in an already depressed patient and poof, the patient feels nothing can “fix” them, so they should just end it. That is my layman’s description for the phenomenom described in this article. If you really want to hear a rant, ask me about the “Women’s Health Initiative-WHI” results about Hormone Therapy.
There are three things at work in every human I know: 1) they generally feel bad about themselves 2) they are fearful about life and the future and 3) they lack faith in God’s love.
To each of these the Gospel offers hope, but how are people to hear the Gospel when the Church fails to proclaim it?