Risk Factors in Patients on Medications with Higher Risks of Suicidality, Depression

Megan Maroney, PharmD, BCPP, clinical associate professor, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; clinical psychiatric pharmacist, Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch, New Jersey, discusses several risk factors for patients on medications with higher risks of suicidality and depression. This video was filmed at the ASHP (American Society of Health-System Pharmacists) 54th Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Megan Maroney, PharmD, BCPP: In terms of risk factors, in general, people who have a history of depression may be at more risk for exhibiting signs of depression or suicidality with some of the medications that are known to have that risk. However, in other cases there doesn’t seem to be that specific risk factor. When you look at the anti-epileptic drugs, for example, when they were studied for specifically psychiatric indications they didn’t really see an increased risk in suicidality, but they did see it in the epilepsy population. In that population, however, patients that have frontal lobe changes or younger patients, again, are always something we look at more closely that might have more of a risk.