title: Antidepressive therapy in depressed clinical suicides.
abstract: A total of 61 clinical suicides, all of them fulfilling the Research Diagnostic Criteria for a depressive disorder, were examined with regard to the psychopharmacological treatment they received at the time of their suicide. Scarcely half were treated with antidepressants, and only a small minority were optimally treated. One of the reasons for this therapeutic inadequacy lies in a discrepancy between the clinical and RDC diagnoses. An improvement in diagnostic practice, in the sense of paying more attention to the presence of a depressive syndrome, along with an improvement in psychopharmacological treatment, could contribute to a reduction in the clinical suicide rate, which has recently been observed to be increasing.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000928:Antidepressive Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000523:psychology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*; D000092864:Suicide Prevention
chemical_list: D000928:Antidepressive Agents