This is admittedly anecdata, but a close member of my family just committed suicide this week, after starting SSRIs a few weeks earlier.<p>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&#x27;s certainly a contingent of mental health workers who feel this is a real risk.<p>Simultaneously, a different member of the family has been on SSRIs under her primary care provider&#x27;s oversight alone - something we finally convinced her was a bad idea.  I wonder how common this practice has become, and if it&#x27;s contributed to the overall increase in U.S. suicide rates.