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As the evidence for withdrawal effects accumulates, some professional groups are revisiting guidelines for prescribers. Thirty years after these drugs made their debut, scientists are still sorting out how anti­depressants affect brain function and what happens when people try to stop taking them. “Withdrawal effects aren’t rare, they aren’t short-lived and they’ve been dismissed by drug companies for decades.”

“The idea that these side effects last a couple of weeks is outrageously inaccurate,” says John Read, PhD, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of East London. Now, new research backs up the idea that for many people, antidepressant withdrawal might be a bigger problem than most have realized. Finding a lack of support from prescribers as they figure out how to stop the drugs, many people have turned to online forums for advice-where some report they’ve resorted to opening pill capsules to remove a few beads, in a DIY effort to reduce their dosages more gradually. According to the latest data available, nearly 13% of people age 12 and older in the United States have taken an antidepressant medication in the past month ( NCHS Data Brief, August 2017).īut what happens when people want to stop taking these medications? The thinking in the medical community was that patients could wean off these drugs with minor side effects, but anecdotally, many patients have reported troubling mental and physical withdrawal symptoms that last for months or even years. Three decades later, the drug and its eventual competitors have transformed the treatment of depression and anxiety. Prozac, the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) approved in the United States, burst onto the scene in 1987.