What the drug does is, is make you feel a certain way(bad). It does not, and can not make you have thoughts of suicide, if it can create your thoughts, why not murder as well? or on the positive side, make you a doctor.

I was 43 year's old with severe suicidal ideations from being placed on 40mg. of Prozac.

A brain altering chemical that was carelessly prescribed by a general practice Doctor along with these words: " Take this so that things will just roll off of your back."
I was under stress from moving.That's all. This was added to a cocktail that then consisted of large doses of Xanax, and Trazedone and Zyprexa. The more I complained of inability to concentrate the general doc increased dosages on all of the medications. This deadly cocktail of medication was given to me without a psychiatric screening for mental illness. The Zyprexa were free samples. What was this doctor thinking? I was not diagnosed bipolar. He never even asked me one psychiatric question. This is what is happening to many Americans. Prozac was given to a friend of mine for "hot flashes". Last I heard, Prozac was not a hormone replacement therapy medication.
This twisted cocktail of a so-called "stress-buster" left me standing on the roof of my car screaming I want to kill myself. In public, in pouring rain.
Could it be, that the action on my part, to go to a doctor when I was feeling stressed was simply falling prey to the fix-it now syndrome? the doc could have easily told me to take a yoga class, take a walk, or sign up for DBT group, even get a massage or facial to help myself unwind. But he is in the business of curing what ails people with medication. Could it be, that the American way of medicating whatever ails you is not the best way after all?
I hope to see more about this in a "Pimping for Prozac" series. It is the first wonder drug that doctors used for what ever ailed millions of Americans.

Old news to the Internet depression community. The problem with clinical depression is that you are too depressed to support suicidal idiation. Once you start coming out of the depression, then you pass through a period of risk. This was true long before the latest generations of antidepressants according to the wisdom of the Internet, and was an unexpected reality that damn near killed me.

It's quite possible to function in a state of profound clinical depression. You can get used to it. Indeed, I had no idea I was "depressed." I was prescribed a medication for restless legs that had antidepressant features. Good old Sinequan.

I was spitting up charcoal in an ER within six months, but aside from that, feeling much better, thank you.

"Aggressive treatment" or "prophylaxis" against SI when commencing treatment with an SSRI has traditionally meant prescribing a concomitant sedative, such as a benzodiazepine, like ativan or xanax, or some other tranquilizer in the early weeks of treatment. (This, of course, could create its own set of problems.) In the late 80's, early 90's, the German regulators wanted to insist on a warning to prescribe a concomitant sedative at the commencement of treatment with Prozac but Lilly managed to worm their way out of this, thinking (rightly I'm sure) that it might put people off. It did slow down approval in Germany for quite some time but not indefinitely. The internal documents from Lilly that have since been made public about their fear of the suicide issue and how to manage it are very damning. They're out there on the net somewhere. Or read The Power to Harm by John Cornwell about the Wesbecker trial in which Lilly engaged in a pretty darn massive cover-up about their drug Prozac and its possible link to violent behavior. The story of those docs are in there with some good quotes.

sadly this is old news to me as well. i had poor experiences on prozac and paxil which i'll write about sometime.

Trying not to over-comment here but...
This is how old news Prozac is to me: May 1989. General Practice doc dx me with the "yuppie flu", while ruling out Lupus. He said he had a new med that could help me feel better, and it was called Prozac. I declined the med and bought a bottle of vitamins.

Bob King, in his response, is describing the so-called “rollback” phenomenon, aka “energizing”. As far as I’m concerned this is a load of hogwash as far as what really happens when someone reacts adversely to an SSRI. It is a cliché that the drug companies push relentlessly in their effort to blame the victim for suicide rather than the drug. This phenomenon, if it exists at all, may occur in an unmedicated depression. Some people who finally make their decision to die and a plan to do so may experience a little burst of energy and relief at that point and actually appear happy or relaxed right before the end. This has nothing whatsoever to do with what happens on an SSRI like Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft. The people who kill themselves on these drugs don’t feel better. Instead they experience an intense “activation” – an agitation that is so extreme they can’t sit still and they are terrified. It’s drug induced and has a name – akathisia. Maybe it’s caused by too much serotonin – certainly it is some acute and unnatural imbalance of neurotransmitters that leads to all sorts of uncharacteristic and bizarre thinking. It can happen to anyone who’s given an SSRI for any reason, not just depression. It’s most likely to happen when the dose is too large for the person in question – perhaps they can’t metabolize it properly. One of the more reassuring things that happened at the last FDA hearing on antidepressants was that the committee actually started referring to “activation” instead of energizing. This seems like a subtle distinction but it’s actually quite profound.

I don't think the one rules out the other, Sara. As I said, this is old news - predating the wide distribution of Prozac, much less safer drugs like Paxil, which I use.

I tried Prozac myself - and suffered exactly the sort of side-effects you mention, along with almost every other "discontinue immediately" level side effects in the product monograph - and at a low dosage according to the dosage charts.

Fortunately, I was braced for the possiblity of side effects, including chemically-induced mental ones and I had no problem simply stopping the drug, as I was advised to do at the first sign of adverse side effects.

Simply knowing that a depression or anxiety state is drug induced and will go away is an immense step to not freaking out about it. if you don't know, and have every reason to believe it's happening IN SPITE OF mediation, well, bad things are predictable.

Problems arise when the person taking the drug is not taken seriously about the severity of such effects, as is all to often true in the MH area, or when they are carelelessly prescribed by some Dr. Feelgood.

Fortunately, I have a general practitioner who trusts me to know my own mind and regulate my meds accordingly, in consultation with him, of course. He doesn't have a sheepskin that gets in the way of admitting he knows less of my personal reality than I do.

As a rule of thumb, it's a great idea to listen to your pharmicist about all possible drug interactions. It is actually their job to second-guess your doctor and advise you as to possible side effects that you should be aware of, especially in combination.