Warning on Prozac for
children Prozac and other drugs of the class called SSRIs (selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors) can make some children and adolescents feel suicidal or
become hostile and aggressive, the European Medicines Agency ruled yesterday.
Reviews of the clinical trials carried out on these drugs with children show
that they offer little benefit to weigh against the potentially life-threatening
side-effects some under-18s experience.
The one exception made by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory
Agency, which came to a similar conclusion in Britain in June 2003, was Prozac.
The European decision puts doctors in a bigger quandary than before. Those
who were convinced that antidepressants worked in children would have prescribed
Prozac but GPs and psychiatrists will have problems offering anything else,
because there is a serious shortage of alternatives. There are long waiting
lists for the so-called "talking therapies" because of shortages of
funds and counselling staff.
Sarah Boseley
Tuesday April 26, 2005
The Guardian
Doctors were yesterday told not to give Prozac to children by the European
medicines regulator, ruling out the one antidepressant of its class that the
British authorities had allowed to be prescribed to under-18s.
