Starting a medication is easy...stopping it can be much harder
Starting a medication is easy...stopping it can be much harder
Antidepressants need instructions on how to stop them, just like cars need brakes.
Recently in Australia on a lecture tour, Mark Horowitz, a Clinical Research Fellow in Psychiatry in the UK’s National Health Service and trainee psychiatrist, said doctors should not be prescribing antidepressants without warning patients about the difficulty of stopping the drugs.
“You wouldn’t sell a car without brakes,” said Horowitz, “I think the same should apply to antidepressants. The drugs should come with instructions on how to stop them safely.”
For decades, patients have been told that withdrawal symptoms are “mild and only last 2 to 3 weeks.”
But Horowitz said that’s not true for most people who’ve been taking the drugs long-term – and the longer you’re on them, the harder it is to stop.
In Australia, the average time a person is on antidepressants is 4 years. Half of people on antidepressants in the UK have used them for more than 2yrs and in the US, half of people taking antidepressants are on them for more than 5yrs.
Horowitz said antidepressants can cause profound withdrawal effects – anxiety, low mood, dizziness, headaches, brain zaps, akathisia – which can be worse than the original condition.
“The guidelines on withdrawal are based on extremely short-term studies of only 8 to 12 weeks, so they’re irrelevant to long-term users,” said Horowitz.
“It’s like a car company crashing its car into a wall at 5 km per hour and saying it's safe, and ignoring the fact that people are driving at 60 km per hour on the road,” he added.