“Patients taking antidepressants can become suicidal in the first weeks of therapy, and physicians should watch patients closely when first giving the drugs or changing dosages, federal regulators said yesterday.

The warnings are part of a public health advisory issued by the Food and Drug Administration and are a reminder that antidepressants, taken by millions around the world, are not without risks. The agency is asking drug manufacturers to place detailed caveats about the drugs’ side effects prominently on their labels.” —New York Times I have long argued that it is primarily the pharmaceutical industry’s targeting of non-psychiatrically-trained primary care physicians (internists, family practitioners and the like) in their marketing, persuading them that these medications are troublefree to prescribe and resulting in inadequate monitoring, that is responsible for many of the disasters recently publicized with the ever-burgeoning use of antidepressants. Perhaps the very visible furor over this issue will make a difference.