Whether antidepressant prescriptions for children and teenagers will really decline is unclear.

In 2002, 11 million antidepressant prescriptions were written for children and adolescents in the United States.

In the study, researchers analyzed antidepressant prescriptions written for adults aged 18 and older from 1996 to 2007 during office-based doctors' visits.

In 1996, 2.5% of all visits to non-psychiatrists resulted in an antidepressant prescription.

The annual growth rate for antidepressant prescriptions reached almost 18 percent in December, up from 13 percent in August.

There was a strong sense that an increase in antidepressant prescriptions was a "bad thing".

That represented almost 8 percent of all antidepressant prescriptions.

But in this case the agency also directed the manufacturers to print and distribute medication guides with every antidepressant prescription, to inform patients of the risks.

It is risky to draw conclusions from limited ecologic analyses of isolated year-to-year fluctuations in antidepressant prescriptions and suicides.

By 2005, the number of antidepressant prescriptions filled in the United States was up to 170 million.