Subject: Are commonly available antidepressants bad for the health?

Following many reports of suicide and serious withdrawal symptoms in general among users of commonly available antidepressants including Prozac, the British Government ordered an inquiry by its Committee on Safety of Medicines. It appears that serious withdrawal symptoms are in fact very frequent with users often needing months to overcome their dependency and that in certain cases this leads to suicide.

What steps will the Commission take with a view to elucidating fully this extremely serious matter? Will it launch large-scale investigations at European level so as to establish the degree of dependency possibly resulting from the long-term use of antidepressants?