• Posted May 1, 2025

Epilepsy, Anxiety Meds Don't Increase Suicide Risk

THURSDAY, May 1, 2025 (HealthDay News) — A class of drugs used to treat epilepsy, nerve pain and anxiety do not appear to increase a person’s risk of self-harm, a major new study says.

Gabapentinoids – which include gabapentin and pregabalin – have been associated with an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, researchers said in background notes.

But researchers found that patients had an increased risk of self-harm prior to being prescribed gabapentinoids, and that the risk rises again shortly after they stop taking the drugs.

“Our results cannot rule out a potential risk of self-harm associated with gabapentinoid prescriptions, but the association does not seem to support a direct effect of gabapentinoid treatment on self-harm because of the elevated risks observed before treatment initiation,” concluded the research team led by senior investigator Kenneth Man, a lecturer in pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety at University College London in the U.K.

In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a report indicating an increased risk of suicide among people who took gabapentinoids and other antiseizure medications.

To look into this, researchers analyzed health records for 10,000 adults in the U.K. who were prescribed gabapentinoids between 2000 and 2020 and had at least one recorded incident of self-harm.

Results show the rate of self-harm increased by 69% in the three months prior to the start of gabapentinoid treatment, suggesting that people prescribed the drugs were already at higher risk.

The risk declined during drug treatment, but markedly increased again in the two-week period after patients stopped taking the meds, researchers found.

Overall, this suggests that gabapentinoids are unlikely to be directly linked to self-harm risk, researchers concluded.

However, the findings also “underscore the necessity for close patient monitoring of self-harm throughout the gabapentinoid treatment journey,” researchers added.

An accompanying editorial noted that “clinically, their results suggest that routine and periodic follow-up of people prescribed gabapentinoids should be considered, particularly in the weeks after medication has been discontinued.”

It added: “Whether young adults and people with no psychiatric diagnoses need more supervision while taking gabapentinoids requires further research to clarify.” 

Amir Sariaslan, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford in the U.K., co-authored the editorial.

The new study appears in The BMJ.

More information

The National Institutes of Health has more on gabapentin.

SOURCE: BMJ, news release, April 30, 2025