Lost in the Black Box: Juvenile Depression, Suicide, and the FDA's Black Box

Abstract

Pediatric mental health concerns, particularly depression, continue to be the emerging “new morbidity” for primary care since first reported in 1975.1,2 The Surgeon General's Report indicates that 1 in 5 of U.S. children suffer a mental illness at any given time,3 yet 80% of affected children never receive appropriate treatment.4 Worse, more than 70% of juveniles with significant mood disorders remain undiagnosed and/or undertreated.5 Poor mental health funding perpetuates inadequate support in schools and in the mental health and juvenile justice systems, which, coupled with an inadequate supply of child psychiatrists, forces pediatricians to provide much of the mental health treatment for children delivered in the United States.