As someone who has both been on and come off antidepressants / SSRIs, it often feels to me like the problem is that there is not a shared mainstream point of view on the nuances of them -- particularly the challenges of coming off of them. The paragraph in the USA Today piece, for example, reads: "Withdrawal symptoms usually start within 5 days of stopping the medicine and last 1 to 2 weeks, and are typically mild, according to the NHS and American Academy of Family Physicians. However, some people have severe withdrawal symptoms that last for several months or more. One study showed that these symptoms can last up to one year, but according to the Cleveland Clinic, another study showed that 2% of people who experienced discontinuation symptoms had lasting symptoms for three or more years." Sounds simple, right? But obviously those of us who are deeper into the science knows it's often much more complex than that (https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/going-off-antidepressants), and many doctors seem to be unaware of the importance of very slow titration. This is where the trust gets broken between news orgs / institutions and average people. Until we start to learn to explain how these things actually work in a consistent way, I suspect we will continue to see these kinds of inflamed exchanges.
I couldn't agree more. Sometimes we are our worst enemy in the mental health field with our inability to explain things and our inconsistent language/messaging. Thanks for sharing your story - and some of the nuances that get lost when we overgeneralize.
Yes!! Exactly. You can see that the USA Today writer is trying to do their due diligence and figure out "the truth" to share in the piece, but even with that care they landed on something that simply doesn't get at the crux of the issue: that coming off of SSRIs can be exquisitely hard for many people, particularly when they aren't supported with the latest thinking about titration, so they find themselves in online rabbit holes trying to fill the gaps that their doctors were unable to.
As someone who has both been on and come off antidepressants / SSRIs, it often feels to me like the problem is that there is not a shared mainstream point of view on the nuances of them -- particularly the challenges of coming off of them. The paragraph in the USA Today piece, for example, reads: "Withdrawal symptoms usually start within 5 days of stopping the medicine and last 1 to 2 weeks, and are typically mild, according to the NHS and American Academy of Family Physicians. However, some people have severe withdrawal symptoms that last for several months or more. One study showed that these symptoms can last up to one year, but according to the Cleveland Clinic, another study showed that 2% of people who experienced discontinuation symptoms had lasting symptoms for three or more years." Sounds simple, right? But obviously those of us who are deeper into the science knows it's often much more complex than that (https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/going-off-antidepressants), and many doctors seem to be unaware of the importance of very slow titration. This is where the trust gets broken between news orgs / institutions and average people. Until we start to learn to explain how these things actually work in a consistent way, I suspect we will continue to see these kinds of inflamed exchanges.
I couldn't agree more. Sometimes we are our worst enemy in the mental health field with our inability to explain things and our inconsistent language/messaging. Thanks for sharing your story - and some of the nuances that get lost when we overgeneralize.
Yes!! Exactly. You can see that the USA Today writer is trying to do their due diligence and figure out "the truth" to share in the piece, but even with that care they landed on something that simply doesn't get at the crux of the issue: that coming off of SSRIs can be exquisitely hard for many people, particularly when they aren't supported with the latest thinking about titration, so they find themselves in online rabbit holes trying to fill the gaps that their doctors were unable to.
Thanks for writing this. I didn’t see the exchange you mention but will read it.
This is an excellent reflection on a really important issue-- thanks.
Thank you for writing this.