Many people taking antidepressants discover they cannot quit
Nearly 25 million [American] adults… , have been on antidepressants for at least two years, a 60 percent increase since 2010 … Many who try to quit say they cannot because of withdrawal symptoms they were never warned about.
“What you see is the number of long-term users just piling up year after year,” said Dr. Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. Dr. Olfson and Dr. Ramin Mojtabai, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, assisted The Times with the analysis … “We’ve come to a place, at least in the West, where it seems every other person is depressed and on medication,” said Edward Shorter, a historian of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. “You do have to wonder what that says about our culture.” Patients who try to stop taking the drugs often say they cannot. In a recent survey of 250 long-term users of psychiatric drugs — most commonly antidepressants — about half who wound down their prescriptions rated the withdrawal as severe. Nearly half who tried to quit could not do so because of these symptoms. In another study of 180 longtime antidepressant users, withdrawal symptoms were reported by more than 130. Almost half said they felt addicted to antidepressants.
Original Article (New York Times):
Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit
Artwork Fair Use: Alan Levine from Strawberry
