SIDE EFFECTS: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial. By Alison Bass. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 260 pages. $24.95.

Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil — all antidepressants frequently prescribed for adolescents — have their downsides as well as their upsides. In this book, Alison Bass, formerly the Boston Globe’s mental health reporter and a longtime seasonal resident of Edgartown, tells stories of how their downsides have frequently been kept from those to whom the antidepressants are being given.

Too often, the companies producing the drugs are funding so-called independent hospital research that involves volunteer participants. Because the hospitals don’t want to lose the funding, neither the patients who are in the studies nor their parents have been informed of the potential dangers of the drugs being used. Too often, too, medical journals laud products about which more questions should be asked. Sometimes research monies are misused. And then whistleblowers who voice their concerns either lose their jobs or are threatened with loss of them.

Alison Bass recounts the stories of some of these whistleblowers. One was a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Boston, another an employee in the psychiatry department at Brown University in Providence and later a social worker for a Rhode Island organization working on behalf of the mentally ill. Ms. Bass also tells the stories of legal battles that have been fought against the drug companies. Elliot Spitzer, former governor of New York, whose career was shattered this year by a sex scandal, was as attorney general of New York a leader in seeking some of these indictments.

For anyone with a teenager for whom antidepressant drugs have been prescribed this is an important book. It is not, however, easy bedside reading. It is chockablock with scientific facts and lengthy accounts of court cases. Ms. Bass tries to lighten the work a little with the human stories of the whistleblowers and of the indestructible near-blind lawyer who was determined to win her case against a major pharmaceutical concern. That helps some, but Side Effects still requires the full attention — and then some — of its reader.

— Phyllis Meras