Preventing Suicide In Teens With Treatment Resistant Depression
Last time on DepressionTalk, we looked at treament resistant depression. That was so you’d get tha background information on this latest study on treatment resistant depression in teens which came out on the online version of The American Journal of Psychiatry, AJP In Advance. It’s got the toe-tapping title of “Predictors of Spontaneous and Systematically Assessed Suicidal Adverse Events in the Treatment of SSRI-Resistant Depression in Adolescents (TORDIA) Study”
The point of the study was to try and discover why some teens with treatment resistant depression are more likely to attempt suicide than others. The top predictors are (drumroll, please):
- Family problems
- Drug or alcohol abuse
- Previous suicidal attempts or threats of an attempt
(Cymbol crash). Not really that earth shattering, are they? The more the dperessive’s life sucks, the more they will think about leaving that life.
Study Specs
Alright, I’m back from banging my head against the desk to tell you how these brainiacs came up with the findings. They looked at 334 adolescents who did not respond to at least three medications. 48 of them thought about or attempted to kill themselves during the study. The average time from dropping the last ineffective medication to thinking about leaving it all behind was three weeks.
Any Practical Advice?
The study strongly suggests that in treating depressed teens likely to commit suicide, “family conflict” and “emotion regulation” methods be used. I think that means talk therapy or another form of therapy where you have to go to someone’s office. It also says that unless a kid can stop self-medicating with drugs and/or alcohol, expect more suicide attempts.
Leave a Reply