A D H D Stimulants and Suicide: Not What You Might Expect (1049 hits)
We know clinically that suicidal behavior is not uncommon in patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who are on stimulants, but little research on this issue has occurred.
...Now a team of investigators have conducted a study to investigate the association between drug treatment for ADHD and the risk for concomitant suicidal behavior among patients with ADHD.
The researchers found that among 37,936 patients with ADHD, 7019 suicide-related events occurred during 150,721 person-years of follow-up, and that the comparison showed a reduced rate of suicide-related events during stimulant treatment periods.
Although this study found no evidence for a positive association between the use of drug treatments for ADHD and the risk for concomitant suicidal behavior among patients with ADHD, and that stimulant treatment might actually be protective, it did show a rate of suicidal behavior in patients with ADHD of about 18%, which is certainly worrying and deserves more investigation.
