"Mark E. Helm, a Little Rock pediatrician who was a medical director of Arkansas's Medicaid evidence-based prescription drug program from 2004 to 2010, said he had seen 18-month-olds being given potent antipsychotic drugs for bipolar disorder, an illness he said rarely develops before adolescence" (Boodman 2012)
The reasons for the manifestation of such behaviors are unclear, even to researchers in the field. It may be that taking antidepressants gives teens the additional energy and drive they needed to be a 'completed' suicide which they lacked while depressed or that the occasional anxiety and agitation which can be a side effect of these drugs results in greater suicidal ideation (Cuffe 2012)
It may be that taking antidepressants gives teens the additional energy and drive they needed to be a 'completed' suicide which they lacked while depressed or that the occasional anxiety and agitation which can be a side effect of these drugs results in greater suicidal ideation (Cuffe 2012). However, given that sometimes antidepressants are not even prescribed by trained psychiatrists, but by primary care providers who are ill-equipped to do the recommended monitoring of teenage patients, it would seem warranted to place additional requirements upon the types of healthcare providers who can prescribe drugs to teens, specifically limiting psychiatrists alone to do so (Smith 2012: 36)