This is admittedly anecdata, but a close member of my family just committed suicide this week, after starting SSRIs a few weeks earlier. The family saw a thera

This is admittedly anecdata, but a close member of my family just committed suicide this week, after starting SSRIs a few weeks earlier. The family saw a therapist for counseling (not the therapist responsible for the SSRIs) yesterday and her opinion was that prescribing an SSRI without an accompanying mood stablizier was extremely risky. There's certainly a contingent of mental health workers who feel this is a real risk. Simultaneously, a different member of the family has been on SSRIs under her primary care provider's oversight alone - something we finally convinced her was a bad idea. I wonder how common this practice has become, and if it's contributed to the overall increase in U.S. suicide rates.