Medications sometimes cause people to have suicidal thoughts and behaviour.
It is important to find out if there is a connection between these thoughts and your prescription so that adjustments can be made.
It is important to distinguish between suicide and death by misadventure. Suicide is the deliberate termination of one’s existence while in one’s right mind. Taking one’s own life under the influence of drugs is death by misadventure, not suicide. This distinction has huge legal, financial, insurance, and religious implications, as well as being of great importance to family and friends.
Medication-induced suicide should be part of any conversation about suicide prevention.
See our guide to drugs that can cause depression, agitation and suicidality.
Also see reducing the risk of treatment induced suicide.
Featured blog posts
Below is a selection of suicide-related blog posts.
Mentally Hijacked by Doxycycline
“The next day I started to feel odd in a way that I could not articulate.”
RoAccutane and the Perfect Circle
This post by Heather and David Roberts is about their son Olly and the struggles he and they had with the health system, acne and its treatments.
We should talk about Brintellix: Antidepressants and Suicide
Someone describes their father’s experience of taking the antidepressant vortioxetine.
Akathisia
You might not be familiar with the term “akathisia”, or you might have heard it misleadingly described as a movement disorder.
Symptoms of akathisia include depression, feeling emotionally uneasy, dark and unpleasant thoughts, and suicidality.
Videos
Antidepressants can CAUSE you to be suicidal and/or homicidal. Part 3 of an interview with RxISK’s Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. David Healy. In the video, Dr. Healy explains that antidepressants can cause you to be suicidal and/or homicidal. Parts 1 and 2 are also available on our Videos page.
The Death of Stephen O’Neill. If you became suicidal on a medication, you might expect that your doctor and others in the healthcare system would be there to help you. As the following two videos explain, Stephen O’Neill and his family discovered that the reality is very different.
Healthy volunteers become suicidal
Experiment at the End of the Millennium is from Dr. David Healy’s book, “Let Them Eat Prozac”, and is about a healthy volunteer study that took place at a psychiatric unit in North Wales. It vividly describes how completely healthy staff members became disturbed and suicidal on an antidepressant. It’s highly recommended for anyone interested in these issues.
Suicide-related adverse event reports
Enter the name of a medication in the box below to see a list of suicide-related adverse events that have been reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
We have more tools to look up adverse event reports on our Drug Search page.
You might also want to enter the name of a drug or side effect in the website search box at the bottom of the page. This will search our website for any related content.
Other side effects
Check out our other zones:
Are you experiencing a drug side effect?
Get your free RxISK Report to find out