Reduced use of antidepressants may have led to more suicides among children, study suggests.   In a front-page article, the Washington Post (9/6, A1, Vedantam) reports, "Warnings from federal regulators four years ago that antidepressants were increasing the risk of suicidal behavior among young people led to a precipitous drop in the use of the drugs." But "a new study has found that the drop coincides with an unprecedented increase in the number of suicides among children," according to results published in the September issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Study data indicate that "the suicide rate among Americans younger than 19 rose 14 percent" between 2003 and 2004. This increase coincided with "a sharp decrease in the prescribing of antidepressants" following warnings from the FDA. Study author Robert Gibbons, a professor of biostatistics and psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, extrapolated that "for every 20 percent decline in antidepressant use among patients of all ages in the United States, an additional 3,040 suicides per year would occur." The study also included data from the Netherlands, which experienced "a 22 percent decrease in antidepressant use among children between 2003 and 2005," and a 49% increase in youth suicides during the same period.

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