Docs Find Pediatric Drop In Depression Diagnosis Depressing

An editorial in the new issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry takes on what it sees as a troubling dynamic: a decrease in depression diagnoses in kids following FDA advisories leading to lees use of anti-depressants in kids.

"The FDA’s advisories had the well-meaning intent of providing information about the safety of antidepressants in pediatric use, and the agency recommended a black box warning to improve treatment safety. However, these policy actions may have had the unintended effect of discouraging the prescription of antidepressants for pediatric patients and pediatric utilization of antidepressants without compensatory increases in other specific treatments. If so, this may have resulted in the lower rates of diagnosing and treating new-onset pediatric depression seen in this study, which may well have meant that many pediatric patients received less psychiatric treatment than needed, which in turn may be a factor in the increased rates of youth suicide reported in previous epidemiological studies."

I'm sure the editorial and accompanying study will be controversial amongst readers. I'm not sure I buy the alleged causal relationship between less use of anti-depressants in kids and a modest bump in suicides among age groups in which suicide isn't particularly prevalent. But that's just me.