From a mental health professional --

I have worked for several years in a quality, professional Child and Adolescent Mental Health clinic with a psychiatric residency training program. Children are occasionally treated with Prozac for some kinds of depressive problems; depends on the kid and the circumstances and a good diagnostic work-up.

There are several stories in recent years about "people going overboard" after taking Prozac. I would like to suggest a couple of reasons for this.

Several issues can be going on together in a variety of combinations:
To start with, Prozac has never been "formally" approved for the treatment of children. This means no properly controlled studies have been done.

Poor diagnostics can play a big role in these sorts of incidents:
Treating a child for "depression" when they may be suffering with a psychotic illness, or the child could be very emotionally disturbed. General practitioners may easily "get in over their heads" trying to treat children’s’ psychiatric issues. Many Adult Psychiatrists I work with won’t have anything to do with treating kids - too complicated!

There was an incident in Lakeland, Florida about 4 years ago. A 10 year-old boy was approached by Law enforcement for truancy violations (missed over 55 days of school in less than 4 years). He took his 4 year-old cousin as a "shield" and held a loaded shotgun on the Deputy.

Prozac was blamed for the child’s choice of actions. In this situation, it seemed pretty clear, though, that the child’s behavior was influenced and rewarded by his father, who showed up on that terrifying scene and complained the Law was harassing his child. He wound up being arrested himself after losing his temper when the deputies refused to give back the boy’s shotgun, which was officially "evidence". The boy in Oregon apparently had even worse problems.

In the end, I am not glorifying Prozac. It has its uses and it could easily be over-prescribed, but it is neither accurate nor fair to just "blame" it (or marijuana) for deep-seated personal problems or outright mental illness.

Related subject: I frequently get suspicious of people complaining about "their pot problem" and the like. This is usually a "smokescreen." They can "fess up" about smoking the evil weed and by-pass dealing with whatever real issues are lurking underneath. Dealing with real issues is hard.