Mother calls for warning on medicines

THE mother of young man who carried out a murder-suicide has called on Irish psychiatry to “face-up” to the evidence that antidepressants can have dangerous side effects.

Leonie Fennell, mother of Shane Clancy, 22, who stabbed himself to death after stabbing his friend, Sebastian Creane, to death in Bray in 2009 said other countries had explicit warnings in relation to the antidepressant her son was on, but here the warnings are not as prominent and seem not taken seriously by some psychiatrists.

Shane’s family believe the antidepressant he had been prescribed, citalopram or cipramil as it is called elsewhere, drove him to carry out the attacks, and an inquest into his death last year returned an open verdict.

Ms Fennell said although it would be extremely difficult, she not ruled out taking a case against the pharmaceutical company which makes the drug which belongs to a group of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

She has written to the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) on several occasions asking for the drug to be investigated further with a view to increasing the warnings on it.

In her correspondence she cites evidence from coroners around the world who have expressed concern with citalopram and its close relationship with suicide and homicide.

In the US, citalopram, like other antidepressants, carries a black box warning stating that it may increase suicidal thinking and behaviour in those under age 24.

In a report prepared for Shane’s inquest, Professor David Healy, an Irish psychiatrist who is a professor at the Cardiff University School of Medicine, states that in a small but significant minority of patients using SSRIs can give rise to violent behaviour including self-harm, suicide and violence towards others.

According to Prof Healy, there is “substantial evidence” that the SSRI group of drugs can induce suicidality in patients who would not otherwise have be at risk of suicide.

“This stems from careful clinical observation of patients in whom suicidality appears to emerge on treatment, where it clears up when treatment is discontinued, reappears on the reintroduction of the same SSRI... evidence supported by clinical trials but escaped the attention of clinicians academics and regulators for many years as a number of pharmaceutical companies making SSRIs have handled the data in a way that would appear unscientific and unethical.”

In the report, Prof Healy also states he has had clinical experience of two men with no prior history of violence who became homicidal after a week on citalopram where the problem cleared up once treatment had stopped.

In the report Dr Healy notes that in the US, the risk of violent behaviour as a side effect of citalopram is recognised in the product’s label.