Suicide and antidepressant overdosage in general practice

Abstract

Depression is a very common condition, and most depressed patients in many countries are treated by their General Practitioners. It is a frequent cause of suicide - one of the major causes of death in young adults - and is the disorder most commonly associated with deliberate self-poisoning, a large percentage of suicides being due to poisoning with drugs that are only available on prescription. Self-poisoning with older tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) poses major clinical management problems, since the majority of patients who overdose with these agents do not reach hospital alive. Though there is no convincing evidence that any one antidepressant is more effective than others or more rapid in onset of therapeutic action, antidepressants do differ substantially in their side-effect profiles and in their toxicity in overdosage, those introduced before 1970 being relatively more toxic. Since suicide rates have been reduced by limiting the availability of toxic substances such as barbiturates and harmful domestic gas, restricting the use of older antidepressant in favour of newer, safer compounds for depressed patients being treated in general practice would also seem to be advisable.