British Medical Journal Article:Antidepressants and Suicide

There has been some concern about the possibility that antidepressant medication could actually increase the risk of suicide.  I have written about this a few times in the past; use the freefind search function in the sidebar if you care to find the earlier posts.  Recently, a few more items of interest have appeared on the 'net.  Gregg Easterbrook wrote an article in the 6/21/2004 New Republic entitled Pills Bury.   Later the same day, Mark A. Kleinman picked up on Easterbrook's article, and delineated his own thoughts on the matter, and Lindsay Beyerstein added some thoughtful comments.  Now, we see an article on the subject published in the British Medical Journal.  The BMJ article goes through a lengthy statistical analysis, and ends up with the same conclusion reached by Easterbrook, Kleinman, and Beyerstein.  In this post, I review the content of the various articles, then pose a few knotty questions of bioethics.  Read the rest at The Rest of the Story.