As I said here, here’s the explanation for the ’side effect’ of the increased risk of suicide with the use of anti-depressants (primarily the SSRI’s).

A person who is depressed can fit into a few categories. I’ll name three of them for simplicity (since depression is on a spectrum rather than a clear-cut ‘you are here’ map). We’ll go with depressed, very depressed, and severely depressed. So when you’re depressed, in this simple example, you’re down. You’re more down than what a person might experience over a bad day or something. You’ve gone from just sadness to actual depression. In this depression, you aren’t suicidal.

Then you can spiral to ‘very depressed.’ Here, you starting thinking of suicide. And here, unfortunately, you still have energy. It’s unfortunate because if you’re thinking of suicide, can come up with a plan, and have the impulse to do so, you can act on it.

Now, if you continue to spiral, you’ll hit ’severely depressed’. Here, you’ll really be thinking of suicide. However, you’ve moved to listless as well. You’ve no energy to carry out your plans.

Taking those three example stages, let’s say you’re in the severely depressed stage and start an SSRI. After a month (how long it generally takes to kick in), you’re starting to feel better. The thing is, you don’t skip from ’severely depressed’ to ‘the realm of normal.’ Instead, you work your way back up the spiral and into the realm of normalcy. So you’re going to go from ’severely depressed’ to ‘very depressed.’ Suddenly, you have energy. And those suicidal thoughts? Well, you’ve now got the energy to possibly carry them out.

That’s where the suicide risk comes from. It’s a strange, counter-intuitive thing, that a medication that’s working can actually increase the risk of suicide for a time before a person moves closer to a normal mood range.

Here’s a handy-dandy little illustration for what I just said (for you visual learners):

I just wish the reports headlines with SSRI’S CAUSE INCREASED RISK OF SUICIDE actually explained that instead of freaking people out about the medications. If treatments have to be okayed by a patient with informed consent (meaning, the patient is given an explanation of what’s going on and must understand before they can consent to treatment), then the general public should also be properly informed of how these things work. At least in regards to what amounts to scare tactics in the strange campaign against psychiatric medications.

I’ll step off my soapbox for the time-being though. Next is my wikipedia spiral, brought to you by the blobfish.

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