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Publication type:	Article in scientific journal
Type of review:	Peer review (publication)
Title:	Suicide rates and prescription of antidepressants
Authors:	Amendola, Simone Plöderl, Martin Hengartner, Michael Pascal
et. al:	No
DOI:	10.1027/0227-5910/a000941 10.21256/zhaw-29966
Published in:	Crisis
Issue Date:	14-Feb-2024
Publisher / Ed. Institution:	Hogrefe
ISSN:	0227-5910 2151-2396
Language:	English
Subjects:	Antidepressants; Epidemiology; Psychopharmacology; Suicide; United States of America (USA); Selbstmord; Psychopharakologie; Antidepressivum; Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika; Epidemiologie
Subject (DDC):	615: Pharmacology and therapeutics 616.8: Neurology, diseases of nervous system
Abstract:	Background: Previous ecological studies reported that increasing antidepressant prescriptions were associated with decreasing suicide rates. Aim: To determine whether antidepressant prescription prevalence is negatively associated with suicide rates (i.e., as antidepressant prescribing increases, suicide rates decrease) between 1999 and 2020. Method: The study protocol was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/978sk/). Publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiological Research (CDC WONDER) and Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) were used. Results: Overall, both the antidepressant prescription prevalence and the suicide rate were increasing from 1990 to 2020 in the United States. Positive trends for both outcomes were also evident when analyses were stratified according to sex and/or race/ethnicity. Pearson's correlation analyses consistently found positive associations between antidepressant prescription prevalence and suicide rates. Limitations: Trends and their associations were examined at the population level. The results cannot clarify the causal nature of the association observed. Conclusion: The results of our analysis consistently demonstrated positive trends for both antidepressant prescription prevalence and suicide rates over time as well as positive associations between them. These findings update those from previous studies and are at odds with the notion that, at a population level, more antidepressant prescriptions would lead to lower suicide rates. However, it needs to be acknowledged that ecological studies provide insufficient evidence to infer causality.
URI:	https://digitalcollection.zhaw.ch/handle/11475/29966
Fulltext version:	Accepted version
License (according to publishing contract):	Licence according to publishing contract
Departement:	Applied Psychology
Organisational Unit:	Psychological Institute (PI)
Appears in collections:	Publikationen Angewandte Psychologie

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