Making new choices about antidepressants in Australia: the long view 1975-2002.

Objective: To examine trends in types of antidepressant medications prescribed in Australia between 1975 and 2002.

Design: Sales data from the Australian pharmaceutical industry were used to examine trends in overall antidepressant prescribing and changes in the types of antidepressants prescribed between 1975 and 2002.

Main Outcome Measures: Antidepressant sales were expressed as defined daily doses (DDDs) per 1000 people per day, using the estimated Australian population for each year obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Changes in fatalities due to overdose of anxiolytic and sedative drugs in the UK (1983-1999).

Objective: To establish the frequency with which anxiolytic and sedative drugs result in fatal poisonings and to examine longitudinal changes in poisoning deaths.

Method: The number of fatal poisonings between 1983 and 1999 in England, Scotland and Wales due to a single anxiolytic or sedative drug was obtained from the Department of Health in the UK. This was divided by the number of prescriptions for these drugs in England and Scotland to derive a fatal toxicity index (FTI) of deaths per million prescriptions.