This article doesn’t mention that in other countries you can be prescribed tapering doses of common antidepressants to help ease the side effects. The NHS does not provide them, you will be advised to halve the dose or take every other day when evidence suggests this is too much of a sudden drop and causes the side effects
They are not designed for easy withdrawal. No small doses.
It always seems wild to me that we prescribe these pills as a lifestyle rather than a plaster alongside long term therapy. There must be ways to correct the brain’s chemistry permanently without being dosed up for life.
Slight side note but the whole justification for why SSRI antidepressants even work was shown to be false.
This was a paper released last year which got bizzarly little coverage. I wonder how much of it has even filtered down to doctors prescribing these drugs.
None of this takes away from the dangers of withdrawal highlighted in the article, if anything it’s more serious since we don’t fully know what’s going on.
Edit: not to say they are not effective for lots of people. They definitely are, but hopefully once we understand how they work we might develope better treatments without the awful side effects.
Sure, I’ll suck up the downvotes: what is with these weird exposés of psychiatric practices lately? Who at Panorama is on an anti-psychiatry kick?
Like, this is stuff that should be being hashed out by doctors, not in the press. “Here’s one doctor with a personal agenda” will always get you a great story, but it’s not science. Andrew Wakefield had a great story, too.
I’m onto year 6, never even thought about the time it’s just become normal to me? I imagine id have a meltdown if I were to stop now haha
Wow shocking not. 2 plus yr wait to see an NHS psychiatrist. Local counselling services not set up to deal with serious traumas and mental health issues patients have. And many only offer limited sessions
Ofc people will take antidepressants for perhaps longer than they should. What else can they do to cope?
Microdosing on magic mushrooms… long term affects, organic 😉
The UK since I started working:
– Recovering from GFC
– Austerity
– Brexit
– Covid
– GFC II Shipping/semiconductor crisis boogaloo
– Climate Crisis worsening
BBC: There seem to be lots of people on long term antidepressants I wonder why
I can only speak to the mental health “support” offered in my particular neck of the woods…. but, frankly, it’s little wonder people spend so many years on varying SSRIs when there’s little viable alternative. Now, not to bemoan ‘Talking Therapies’ – I have no doubt that it is indeed a viable and indeed useful resource for some – but it shouldn’t be the case that you have to be put on a waiting list for that, then have them realise that it’s not appropriate for you, only to then be put on a second waiting list for an initial assessment with a psychiatrist.
For me, after an almost three year wait I was eventually told that there aren’t sufficient psychiatrists / mental health workers qualified to help autistic people so I was discharged from their care.
It took nine months of arguing and having to threaten all manner of legal actions but eventually I got hold of my complete medical records – good lord did THAT make for interesting reading.
Chucked them after two. I’d rather feel like shit than be robbed of any feelings whatsoever, like being chemically castrated.
Mental health treatment in the UK is essentially ‘take these pills or fend for yourself’.
I’m one of those people. Was slapped on at age 19 (now 26) been back numerous times to numerous GP’s around the country with progression of symptoms, they just up your dose and tell you to jog on.
There’s been times I’ve been unable to speak to the GP and written down what I wanted to communicate as I couldn’t get the words out in-between crying.
In that time I have never or still since been offered a psychiatrist assessment or treatment other than CBT. (Which although can be good for some people, does nothing if situational circumstances cannot be changed as it focuses on the belief that positive thoughts can power you through any situation)
The NHS system is not equipped for anything and has not been a functioning system for at least my whole adult life.
Been using them for 25 years. None of the ‘therapies’ I’ve tried worked.
I’ve just accepted there’s some kind of chemical imbalance in my brain that is sorted out by SSRIs and got on with my life
It’s a bit inconvenient but better than the alternative. Which would be me dead.
Well…yeah, the access to mental healthcare in this country collapsed even before Covid…what do you expect?
I stopped taking mine when my prescription was suddenly refused. Felt awful for weeks but have settled down now. I had been on the for 8 years before. What surprised me, not a single call from the Dr (he used to ring monthly to confirm the prescription).
Years and years of systemic underfunding to mental health services has trashed it. Antidepressants are all they can offer. I had a breakdown. Too scared to go out, too scared to see anyone, hallucinating, suicidal thoughts, the works.
GP was amazing, but referral to mental health team was a month, and 6 month wait for counselling.
Meds got me to the stage where I could pay for counselling…£200 a month when I’ve no income because I can’t work. It’s really helping but it’s a struggle. Without it I’d be dosed up as high as possible I suspect, at least counselling has allowed me to minimise the dose a little.
Systemic underfunding makes crises like this unbelievably scary.
I suffer from OCD and have since i was a kid. I’ve had therapy at my worst and it helps but i need my SSRIs daily just to function ‘normally’. I’ve tried coming off them – year or two at a time – and my quality of life plummets dramatically.
I think part of the problem is labelling them as ‘antidepressants’. I’m not depressed, i just have a brain that thinks it needs to repeat certain behaviour and thoughts to be ‘safe’. Headlines like this can make people think ‘this country is so fucked that people are depressed” but there are a range of neurodivergent issues that this medication can help with, many of which *probably* aren’t things you can even cure (for the lack of a better word) permanently and long term.
Nothing wrong with this.
I took antidepressants for 5+ years. I peaked around year 4 and then tapered off them over 2 more years.
Antidepressants and other mental health medications aren’t like taking pills to cure a headache. They don’t work in minutes, or hours, or days.
It takes months and, more likely, years before you can start coming off them.
I’m on a very low dosage of antidepressants (amitriptyline) for IBS symptoms. These days antidepressants aren’t only taken just because you are depressed.
And the new research says depression isn’t caused by serotonin levels.
While its true some people can really benefit from anti-depressants if they have an actual chemical imbalance, unfortunately anti-depressants don’t fix a shitty life. Being miserable because your life is miserable doesn’t mean your mentally ill, it means your sane. If any other medication had a fail rate as high as anti-depressants they would be considered unfit for purpose, but they make a lot of money, so they keep pushing them.
Been on antidepressants for near a decade. Never once been helped by them, they are an asset to maintain productivity of the workforce, nothing more, a bandaid on a gunshot wound.
The fact is our society and the world we live in are dying, there is no future, no joy anymore and I think this week I will be exploring means to end my life after 17 years of suffering depression.
Good luck with your collapsing corrupt economy, dying world and manufactured culture war folks. Peace out.
Education system fucked. Apprenticeship schemes fucked. University fees fucked. Career prospects fucked. Housing market fucked. Mental health services super fucked. Cost of living fucked. Government fucked. Covid fucked. Inflation fucked. Verge of ww3 fucked. Health services in general fucked. Zero hours contracts fucked.
Everything is fucked. For some this has spanned their entire lives. Everything they’ve known is just a big fucked fucking mess. Fuck off.
So bad.
I was clinically depressed on and off from the age of 17 until my early 30’s, the longest period lasting 10 years. During that long stretch I was put on fluoxetine hydrochloride (Prozac) and sent on my way. My repeats just kept coming through, but no-one bothered to check whether I still needed to take them – they just kept plying me with pills.
It was the worst feeling, in hindsight sometimes worse than being depressed, because on Prozac I felt NOTHING: no sadness, no joy, no anger – NOTHING. I was a robot, a machine, soulless, just chugging along through life. I guess it works for depression because you can’t be depressed if you don’t feel anything, right? But, you can’t have a normal life with relationships like that, either.
So, I decided one day I just didn’t want to live like that anymore, and I started weaning myself off the pills and replaced them with more natural alternatives like 5-HTP. Happy to say that I’ve been free of antidepressants for 10 years now.
It seems to be a common thing with doctors, though: here, take this, and keep taking it. Don’t worry about the cause, we’ll just treat the symptom. We won’t check to see if the cause is still a problem, we’ll just keep plying you with these pills. The US has the opioid crisis for this exact reason.
Been using anti-depressants since I was 16 and I’m now 29. Tried different therapies and they were all absolutely useless. When the country is the way that it is and the economy is poor, it’s no surprise that we feel depressed.
I’m surprised the figure is that low to be honest, given * broadly gestures at everything *.
I know when I went on antidepressants in 2006 the psychiatrist said I’d probably be on them for life; because that’s what happens with severe depression. Might there just be a lot of people with severe depression, who are being prescribed medication completely appropriately?
Well, personally I just stopped taking sertraline after five years (and escitalopram for 3 years before that). Life’s been pretty good, good enough that I can start feeling things rather than suppressing them.
YMMV of course.
Lol if you think that’s bad, 1/5 of Northern Ireland were prescribed anti-depressants in 2020/2021
*20% of the country*
Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been on them since I was 17 (I’m 37 now) and the majority of my closest friends have been on them longterm, too. Maybe I’m just that depressing to have as a friend…
People need better access to talking therapies because they really do help. People shouldn’t be stuck on medication they may not need (or may be able to take a lower dose) because other treatments aren’t available or because the waiting list is so long.
The short courses of talking therapy provided by private contractors may work well for some people but there needs to be faster access to more comprehensive care. I was told by a therapist from a private contractor that I was “too complex” for her so she referred me to the community mental health team who told me I’m not ill enough to remain under their care. My GP is incredible and was left stumped.
As a GP as society fails people will go down the medical pathway to try and fix there problems.
Feel depressed because you have a low paying job poor house etc.. solution speak to the GP
Kid misbehaving because you are spending your time on tiktok instead of parenting… your kid must have adhd
Overweight due to poor diet and lack of exercise- speak to your gp about weight loss medication
The list goes on
I’ve been on SSRIs since I was 20, almost 36 now. They absolutely saved my life. I’ve been up and down with dosage depending on what’s going on in my life and have no intention of coming off them. They’ve helped me organise my thoughts and regulate my emotions and I don’t feel any shame for being on them for so long, I don’t think anyone should. If they help, they help!
As a person who had been on antidepressants for almost 10 years with worsening mental health the entire time, horrific side effects with no actual benefits and no one who would really pay attention to the actual problems I was presenting, the whole system just pisses me off. How can a GP, who isn’t trained to diagnose Mental Illness, give out neurotropic medication without a specialist telling them that it is appropriate. Considering some of the side effects which can be long term after coming off, this is a real issue with them handing them out to anyone who has a situational depressive episode, which happens to everyone.
After long, intense researching (am a trained scientist so this was medical journals and Molecular Biology based evidence which is my trained area) and realisation from my own nephew and then brother being diagnosed, I realised my actual issue is that I have very intense ADHD, hormone cycle induced depression (PMDD) and delayed sleep phase all of which are very comorbid and had to jump through many hoops to get diagnosis and meds for and might still loose access to at the whims of my GP.
The frustration is that ADHD is a relatively easy thing to diagnose (and is horrifically under diagnosed especially in women), with a solid evidence base of Neurobiological difference from the base state and tonnes of evidence of effective treatment with Stimulant medication. The stimulants used to treat ADHD are not easy to abuse and tend not to induce the desired effects wanted if they are abused. They are short acting and when taken properly do not cause addiction or dependance or tolerance, but do allow for a better quality of life, which is the aim of any medication. So when compare to antidepressants are in fact LESS dangerous over all. Yet to get this medication for a legitimate Neuro-developmental condition, you have to jump through so many hoops that most just give up, and even if you get it there is no security that you get to keep it. How is this being allowed? Why is the evidence not being accepted on the effectiveness of the medications we used for mental illness? Why are unqualified people allowed to prescribe these meds?
33 comments
This article doesn’t mention that in other countries you can be prescribed tapering doses of common antidepressants to help ease the side effects. The NHS does not provide them, you will be advised to halve the dose or take every other day when evidence suggests this is too much of a sudden drop and causes the side effects
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S2215-0366(19)30032-X/fulltext
They are not designed for easy withdrawal. No small doses.
It always seems wild to me that we prescribe these pills as a lifestyle rather than a plaster alongside long term therapy. There must be ways to correct the brain’s chemistry permanently without being dosed up for life.
Slight side note but the whole justification for why SSRI antidepressants even work was shown to be false.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/analysis-depression-probably-not-caused-chemical-imbalance-brain-new-study
This was a paper released last year which got bizzarly little coverage. I wonder how much of it has even filtered down to doctors prescribing these drugs.
None of this takes away from the dangers of withdrawal highlighted in the article, if anything it’s more serious since we don’t fully know what’s going on.
Edit: not to say they are not effective for lots of people. They definitely are, but hopefully once we understand how they work we might develope better treatments without the awful side effects.
Sure, I’ll suck up the downvotes: what is with these weird exposés of psychiatric practices lately? Who at Panorama is on an anti-psychiatry kick?
Like, this is stuff that should be being hashed out by doctors, not in the press. “Here’s one doctor with a personal agenda” will always get you a great story, but it’s not science. Andrew Wakefield had a great story, too.
I’m onto year 6, never even thought about the time it’s just become normal to me? I imagine id have a meltdown if I were to stop now haha
Wow shocking not. 2 plus yr wait to see an NHS psychiatrist. Local counselling services not set up to deal with serious traumas and mental health issues patients have. And many only offer limited sessions
Ofc people will take antidepressants for perhaps longer than they should. What else can they do to cope?
Microdosing on magic mushrooms… long term affects, organic 😉
The UK since I started working:
– Recovering from GFC
– Austerity
– Brexit
– Covid
– GFC II Shipping/semiconductor crisis boogaloo
– Climate Crisis worsening
BBC: There seem to be lots of people on long term antidepressants I wonder why
I can only speak to the mental health “support” offered in my particular neck of the woods…. but, frankly, it’s little wonder people spend so many years on varying SSRIs when there’s little viable alternative. Now, not to bemoan ‘Talking Therapies’ – I have no doubt that it is indeed a viable and indeed useful resource for some – but it shouldn’t be the case that you have to be put on a waiting list for that, then have them realise that it’s not appropriate for you, only to then be put on a second waiting list for an initial assessment with a psychiatrist.
For me, after an almost three year wait I was eventually told that there aren’t sufficient psychiatrists / mental health workers qualified to help autistic people so I was discharged from their care.
It took nine months of arguing and having to threaten all manner of legal actions but eventually I got hold of my complete medical records – good lord did THAT make for interesting reading.
Chucked them after two. I’d rather feel like shit than be robbed of any feelings whatsoever, like being chemically castrated.
Mental health treatment in the UK is essentially ‘take these pills or fend for yourself’.
I’m one of those people. Was slapped on at age 19 (now 26) been back numerous times to numerous GP’s around the country with progression of symptoms, they just up your dose and tell you to jog on.
There’s been times I’ve been unable to speak to the GP and written down what I wanted to communicate as I couldn’t get the words out in-between crying.
In that time I have never or still since been offered a psychiatrist assessment or treatment other than CBT. (Which although can be good for some people, does nothing if situational circumstances cannot be changed as it focuses on the belief that positive thoughts can power you through any situation)
The NHS system is not equipped for anything and has not been a functioning system for at least my whole adult life.
Been using them for 25 years. None of the ‘therapies’ I’ve tried worked.
I’ve just accepted there’s some kind of chemical imbalance in my brain that is sorted out by SSRIs and got on with my life
It’s a bit inconvenient but better than the alternative. Which would be me dead.
Well…yeah, the access to mental healthcare in this country collapsed even before Covid…what do you expect?
I stopped taking mine when my prescription was suddenly refused. Felt awful for weeks but have settled down now. I had been on the for 8 years before. What surprised me, not a single call from the Dr (he used to ring monthly to confirm the prescription).
Years and years of systemic underfunding to mental health services has trashed it. Antidepressants are all they can offer. I had a breakdown. Too scared to go out, too scared to see anyone, hallucinating, suicidal thoughts, the works.
GP was amazing, but referral to mental health team was a month, and 6 month wait for counselling.
Meds got me to the stage where I could pay for counselling…£200 a month when I’ve no income because I can’t work. It’s really helping but it’s a struggle. Without it I’d be dosed up as high as possible I suspect, at least counselling has allowed me to minimise the dose a little.
Systemic underfunding makes crises like this unbelievably scary.
I suffer from OCD and have since i was a kid. I’ve had therapy at my worst and it helps but i need my SSRIs daily just to function ‘normally’. I’ve tried coming off them – year or two at a time – and my quality of life plummets dramatically.
I think part of the problem is labelling them as ‘antidepressants’. I’m not depressed, i just have a brain that thinks it needs to repeat certain behaviour and thoughts to be ‘safe’. Headlines like this can make people think ‘this country is so fucked that people are depressed” but there are a range of neurodivergent issues that this medication can help with, many of which *probably* aren’t things you can even cure (for the lack of a better word) permanently and long term.
Nothing wrong with this.
I took antidepressants for 5+ years. I peaked around year 4 and then tapered off them over 2 more years.
Antidepressants and other mental health medications aren’t like taking pills to cure a headache. They don’t work in minutes, or hours, or days.
It takes months and, more likely, years before you can start coming off them.
I’m on a very low dosage of antidepressants (amitriptyline) for IBS symptoms. These days antidepressants aren’t only taken just because you are depressed.
And the new research says depression isn’t caused by serotonin levels.
While its true some people can really benefit from anti-depressants if they have an actual chemical imbalance, unfortunately anti-depressants don’t fix a shitty life. Being miserable because your life is miserable doesn’t mean your mentally ill, it means your sane. If any other medication had a fail rate as high as anti-depressants they would be considered unfit for purpose, but they make a lot of money, so they keep pushing them.
Been on antidepressants for near a decade. Never once been helped by them, they are an asset to maintain productivity of the workforce, nothing more, a bandaid on a gunshot wound.
The fact is our society and the world we live in are dying, there is no future, no joy anymore and I think this week I will be exploring means to end my life after 17 years of suffering depression.
Good luck with your collapsing corrupt economy, dying world and manufactured culture war folks. Peace out.
Education system fucked. Apprenticeship schemes fucked. University fees fucked. Career prospects fucked. Housing market fucked. Mental health services super fucked. Cost of living fucked. Government fucked. Covid fucked. Inflation fucked. Verge of ww3 fucked. Health services in general fucked. Zero hours contracts fucked.
Everything is fucked. For some this has spanned their entire lives. Everything they’ve known is just a big fucked fucking mess. Fuck off.
So bad.
I was clinically depressed on and off from the age of 17 until my early 30’s, the longest period lasting 10 years. During that long stretch I was put on fluoxetine hydrochloride (Prozac) and sent on my way. My repeats just kept coming through, but no-one bothered to check whether I still needed to take them – they just kept plying me with pills.
It was the worst feeling, in hindsight sometimes worse than being depressed, because on Prozac I felt NOTHING: no sadness, no joy, no anger – NOTHING. I was a robot, a machine, soulless, just chugging along through life. I guess it works for depression because you can’t be depressed if you don’t feel anything, right? But, you can’t have a normal life with relationships like that, either.
So, I decided one day I just didn’t want to live like that anymore, and I started weaning myself off the pills and replaced them with more natural alternatives like 5-HTP. Happy to say that I’ve been free of antidepressants for 10 years now.
It seems to be a common thing with doctors, though: here, take this, and keep taking it. Don’t worry about the cause, we’ll just treat the symptom. We won’t check to see if the cause is still a problem, we’ll just keep plying you with these pills. The US has the opioid crisis for this exact reason.
Been using anti-depressants since I was 16 and I’m now 29. Tried different therapies and they were all absolutely useless. When the country is the way that it is and the economy is poor, it’s no surprise that we feel depressed.
I’m surprised the figure is that low to be honest, given * broadly gestures at everything *.
I know when I went on antidepressants in 2006 the psychiatrist said I’d probably be on them for life; because that’s what happens with severe depression. Might there just be a lot of people with severe depression, who are being prescribed medication completely appropriately?
Well, personally I just stopped taking sertraline after five years (and escitalopram for 3 years before that). Life’s been pretty good, good enough that I can start feeling things rather than suppressing them.
YMMV of course.
Lol if you think that’s bad, 1/5 of Northern Ireland were prescribed anti-depressants in 2020/2021
*20% of the country*
Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been on them since I was 17 (I’m 37 now) and the majority of my closest friends have been on them longterm, too. Maybe I’m just that depressing to have as a friend…
People need better access to talking therapies because they really do help. People shouldn’t be stuck on medication they may not need (or may be able to take a lower dose) because other treatments aren’t available or because the waiting list is so long.
The short courses of talking therapy provided by private contractors may work well for some people but there needs to be faster access to more comprehensive care. I was told by a therapist from a private contractor that I was “too complex” for her so she referred me to the community mental health team who told me I’m not ill enough to remain under their care. My GP is incredible and was left stumped.
As a GP as society fails people will go down the medical pathway to try and fix there problems.
Feel depressed because you have a low paying job poor house etc.. solution speak to the GP
Kid misbehaving because you are spending your time on tiktok instead of parenting… your kid must have adhd
Overweight due to poor diet and lack of exercise- speak to your gp about weight loss medication
The list goes on
I’ve been on SSRIs since I was 20, almost 36 now. They absolutely saved my life. I’ve been up and down with dosage depending on what’s going on in my life and have no intention of coming off them. They’ve helped me organise my thoughts and regulate my emotions and I don’t feel any shame for being on them for so long, I don’t think anyone should. If they help, they help!
As a person who had been on antidepressants for almost 10 years with worsening mental health the entire time, horrific side effects with no actual benefits and no one who would really pay attention to the actual problems I was presenting, the whole system just pisses me off. How can a GP, who isn’t trained to diagnose Mental Illness, give out neurotropic medication without a specialist telling them that it is appropriate. Considering some of the side effects which can be long term after coming off, this is a real issue with them handing them out to anyone who has a situational depressive episode, which happens to everyone.
After long, intense researching (am a trained scientist so this was medical journals and Molecular Biology based evidence which is my trained area) and realisation from my own nephew and then brother being diagnosed, I realised my actual issue is that I have very intense ADHD, hormone cycle induced depression (PMDD) and delayed sleep phase all of which are very comorbid and had to jump through many hoops to get diagnosis and meds for and might still loose access to at the whims of my GP.
The frustration is that ADHD is a relatively easy thing to diagnose (and is horrifically under diagnosed especially in women), with a solid evidence base of Neurobiological difference from the base state and tonnes of evidence of effective treatment with Stimulant medication. The stimulants used to treat ADHD are not easy to abuse and tend not to induce the desired effects wanted if they are abused. They are short acting and when taken properly do not cause addiction or dependance or tolerance, but do allow for a better quality of life, which is the aim of any medication. So when compare to antidepressants are in fact LESS dangerous over all. Yet to get this medication for a legitimate Neuro-developmental condition, you have to jump through so many hoops that most just give up, and even if you get it there is no security that you get to keep it. How is this being allowed? Why is the evidence not being accepted on the effectiveness of the medications we used for mental illness? Why are unqualified people allowed to prescribe these meds?