A mother has urged parents not to look straight to pills if their children become depressed or ridden with anxiety after her teenager spiralled out of control on a range of so-called corrective drugs.

The woman, who did not wish to be named, said her adolescent child sunk further and further into depression and self-loathing after being prescribed a cocktail of drugs.

She said the child was first given Paxil and Concerta, which is often known as Ritalin, to control the depression, before being transferred onto another type of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI).

However, she said few people realised how many side affects SSRIs can have, and failed to correlate the relationship between worsening behaviour and the drugs.

This summer, warnings went out about giving Paxil and Venlafaxine - both SSRIs - to people under the age of 18, and she advised all parents to question doctors about diagnosis and treatment before simply accepting what they said.

"My teen was upset and unhappy at school, and was simply not the same," said the tearful mother.

"I took my child to see a doctor who referred them to a psychiatrist and he prescribed Paxil and Concerta, and from then things started to go terribly wrong.

"My child tried to commit suicide three times, became extremely hostile and then ran away from home.

"My child became the teen from hell - it was like something out of a horror film. It was a complete personality change."

The woman said her teenager was being tormented and bullied at school, and had initially asked to be transferred elsewhere, but both she and her husband said 'no', believing it to be a good school and thinking the problem would go away.

Instead, they took their child to see a doctor.

But now, with hindsight, she said they wished they had simply removed the teenager from the school, instead of taking the doctor's advice and prescription.

She said after the teenager started to take the Paxil and Concerta, they could not settle down, became aggressive and complained that their mind was working overtime 24 hours a day.

"My child said to me 'I can't stop thinking. I can't stop the stuff in my brain'," said the mother.

The teenager was practically climbing the walls, causing problems at home and seeing their grades plummet at school, and so, doctors upped the child's dosage even further.

But far from getting better, the problems only got worse.

Finally, after four or five months, and after consultation with another doctor, the teenager was taken off the pills and put on another SSRI.

The mother said she was then told that Paxil and Concerta were not a good mix together.

However, the replacement drug was no more successful and the teenager began to suffer serious health issues. The doctor realised very quickly that the teenager was suffering adverse affects from the medication so it was removed.

It was only then that the child's parents realised that the months of suicide attempts, screaming matches and out of control behaviour had been drug-induced.

"I wish we knew then what we know now," said the mother.

"My message to parents is to look at other things before necessarily turning to drugs. Some of these drugs can cause more problems than you had in the first place. They don't necessarily help your child at all.

"You as a parent don't understand the words describing possible side affects on bottles and boxes, but doctors do. Make sure you ask them about it and get answers.

"For example, we had never heard about possible Akathisia from these drugs, which consists of extreme restlessness, hostility, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, but it was listed there as a possible side affect."

And she added: "Now our child is not on any drugs, is in a different school and is back to the old person that we knew. Our child is fine. We feel that the hell we went through for months was caused by the drugs."

IN June the Department of Health in Britain released a statement recommending psychiatrists not to prescribe Paxil, also known as Seroxat, to people under the age of 18.

It said that the drug had been evaluated by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and had shown "there was an increase in the rate of self-harm and potentially suicidal behaviour in this age group".

The statement added: "It has become clear that the benefits of Seroxat in children, for the treatment of depressive illness, do not outweigh these risks."

The British mental health charity MIND said the evidence from the agency underlined the concerns voiced by young people taking Paxil.

And a report on the use of psychiatric medications carried out by Truehope in the US, reported a number of serious side affects associated with Paxil, not least that girls who took it faced a 720 percent greater chance of getting breast cancer.