Teens are prescribed more medications than ever, while teenage suicides are soaring.

One of the paradoxes of child and adolescent psychiatry is that, at a time when teens are prescribed more medications than ever, teenage suicides are soaring. Antidepressants and antipsychotics are supposed to decrease suicide, not increase it.

A report of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of March 6, 2015, says that suicides per 100,000 population among persons aged 10-24 increased from 1.8 in 1994 to 3.1 in 2012, an annual increase of 3.0 percent. This is almost doubling over that 18-year period.

See the report here

Male rates are far higher than female, and suicides among male adolescents rose annually by 2.2 percent. But here is the shocker: suicides among female adolescents rose from 0.5 per 100,000 in 1994 to 1.7 in 2012, an annual change of 6.7 percent.

Hanging (“suffocation”) has soared among young women, and the CDC report noted a grim landmark: “Suffocation surpassed firearm as the most common mechanism of suicide among females in 2001.”

Whatever medications these young men and women receive are not working. A truly alarming increase in the consumption of psychopharmaceuticals has taken place at the same time as the increase in suicide. For example, the prescription of antipsychotic medications for patients under 20 rose from 300 per 100,000 population in 1993-95 to almost 1500 in 2002. (New York Times, “Beyond Ritalin,” June 6, 2006, 18)

Could there possibly be a connection?

Or do you "double down" and insist that the problem is that what we need is more drugs?

Guess what this shrink says. Yep, more DRUGS. without figuring out the source.

American Kids are the Most Medicated in the World I would say this is very suggestive.