In February of 2004, a young college student named Traci Johnson hung herself in a research laboratory run by Eli Lilly. She was a subject in a clinical trial of duloxetine, a Lilly drug that was being tested for urinary incontinence. The same drug was later approved by the FDA for the treatment of depression under the trade name Cymbalta. But according to an article by Jeanne Lenzer in Slate, neither Lilly nor the FDA has made any mention of Johnson's suicide in their public database. The FDA maintains that the details of Johnson's suicide are a trade secret.

Lenzer writes:

"Meanwhile, my sources (sorry, they're gun-shy and anonymous) were telling me that duloxetine caused suicidal tendencies in patients who took the drug for incontinence—and who were not depressed. That news was potentially explosive. In the face of questions about a link between antidepressants and suicide, industry experts have long insisted that it's depression, not the drugs used to treat it, that causes patients to kill themselves. Johnson's death appeared to call that claim into question. She entered the clinical trial as a healthy, nondepressed volunteer in order to help pay her college tuition. And she was only approved for the study after undergoing thorough medical testing to screen out depression or suicidal tendencies."