Teen suicide: ADHD medication as prevention
"Health Canada has issued a series of black-box warnings about the suicidal potential of ADHD medications. However, these warnings have failed to take into account epidemiological studies showing the opposite, that increased use of this medication has been associated with reduced suicide risk in adolescents," says Dr. Alain Lesage, psychiatrist and researcher at the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (CIUSSS de l'Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal) and one of study's authors. In the past decade, the medical treatment of ADHD increased three-fold in Quebec, reaching 9% of boys aged 10 years and 4% of boys aged 15 years. However, suicide rates in Quebec's adolescents decreased by nearly 50% during that period among 15-19 year olds, which contradicts the warnings issued by Health Canada. "Clearly, the increased use of ADHD drugs indicates that they might actually reduce rather than augment the risk of suicide," says Edouard Kouassi, pharm...