Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit
Ah, another Benedict Carey antidepressant hatchet job. Anecdotes about withdrawal symptoms + alarmist statistics about number of Americans on antidepressants + vague questions about lack of data suggesting that we know little about antidepressant long-term safety.<p>A few important points:<p>1. Antidepressants can truly change people&#x27;s lives. Not everyone&#x27;s, and they&#x27;re not the only treatment that works. Somehow this reporter tends to consistently overlook the clear evidence of benefit (I think this recent meta-analysis was posted on hn: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;29477251" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;29477251</a>)<p>2. Withdrawal symptoms are common if antidepressants are stopped abruptly - some of the folks who reported these symptoms originally have been favorite targets of Benedict Carey, ironically (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;9396960" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;9396960</a>). That&#x27;s why docs encourage tapering antidepressants.<p>3. The article doesn&#x27;t distinguish between this sort of short-term withdrawal (common), and longer-term problems with discontinuation (likely quite rare) - they&#x27;re very very different phenomena.<p>4. In some cases, difficulty with discontinuing longer-term is a result of persistent depression and anxiety (or returning depression and anxiety). It&#x27;s not polite to point this out.<p>5. It&#x27;s hard to imagine the Times writing an article about the problem with statins being that, once you stop them, cholesterol increases again.<p>6. If there were substantial long-term risks associated with antidepressants, we would have seen them - and believe me, people have looked and are looking.<p>7. BUT - we &#x2F;do&#x2F; need more research to understand long-term effects of antidepressant treatment; this absence of systematic long-term study is true for  most meds, frankly, but that&#x27;s no excuse. My question would be: Who pays for it? There&#x27;s no shortage of investigators who would be delighted to study it. But try getting a foundation, or NIH, to support such a study.<p>&#x2F;rant