Latest news with #DrSameerJauhar
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Antidepressant withdrawal is rare, study finds. Here are the most common symptoms
Going off of antidepressants may not come with as many side effects as people think, an extensive new analysis has found. The study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, is the largest review to date on antidepressant withdrawal symptoms, according to the researchers from the United Kingdom. It sought to understand what happens when people stop taking antidepressants, and to identify which symptoms come from discontinuing medication and which could reflect a potential relapse of depression or other mental health issues. 'Our work finds that most people do not experience severe withdrawal, in terms of additional symptoms,' Dr Sameer Jauhar, the study's lead author and a researcher at Imperial College London, said in a statement. The review included 50 randomised controlled trials – which are considered the gold standard in medical research – spanning about 17,800 people. On average, people who stopped taking antidepressants experienced symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vertigo, and nervousness in the first two weeks. But most people had few enough symptoms that they were considered 'below the cutoff' for clinical withdrawal, the study found. People's moods also did not appear to get worse as a result of discontinuing their medicine, meaning it could instead be a sign that their depression is coming back, researchers said. Related Antidepressant prescriptions have increased among young French people since 2019, report finds The findings contradict another study published earlier this year that found antidepressant withdrawal symptoms were 'common, and severe and prolonged' for many patients. But Katharina Domschke, chair of the psychiatry and psychotherapy department at the University of Freiburg in Germany, said that study was 'methodologically much weaker' because it only included 310 patients and had a higher risk of bias in the results. The latest analysis is 'extremely welcome in terms of helping to destigmatise antidepressants,' added Domschke, who was not involved with the report. The study included several types of antidepressants, including agomelatine, vortioxetine, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as escitalopram, sertraline and paroxetine, and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) like venlafaxine and duloxetine. Researchers tracked the number of symptoms that people experienced on a 43-item scale, comparing those who went off antidepressants against those taking placebos, or dummy treatments. Overall, patients who stopped antidepressants experienced one extra symptom – such as nausea or vertigo – than people who stopped placebos. For example, 20 per cent of people who stopped taking venlafaxine suffered from dizziness, compared with just 1.8 per cent of those on placebos. Related Pills or paintings? Swiss town lets doctors prescribe free museum visits as art therapy Different antidepressants also came with different severity and length of symptoms. People who went off of desvenlafaxine experienced the most symptoms, while patients who stopped vortioxetine were fairly similar to those who took placebo medicines. The review has some limitations. Most of the studies followed people for up to two weeks after they stopped taking antidepressants, making it difficult to draw conclusions about long-term effects. 'We still need more data on long-term users, individual vulnerability, and best practices for discontinuation,' Dr Christiaan Vinkers, a psychiatrist and stress researcher at Amsterdam University Medical Center who was not involved with the study, said in a statement. For now, Vinkers said, "the findings promote a more balanced and science-based understanding of antidepressant discontinuation".
New York Times
3 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
New Research Questions Severity of Withdrawal From Antidepressants
Few practices in mental health are debated more than the long-term use of antidepressant medications, which are prescribed to roughly one in nine adults in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A reassessment began in 2019, when two British researchers published a study that found that 56 percent of patients suffered from withdrawal symptoms when they stopped antidepressant medications and that 46 percent of those described their symptoms as severe. The findings made headlines in Britain and had a powerful ripple effect, forcing changes to psychiatric training and prescribing guidelines. And they fed a growing grass-roots movement calling to rein in the prescription of psychotropic drugs that has, in recent months, gained new influence in the United States with the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary. A new study, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, makes the case that these warnings were overblown. The authors of the new paper found that a week after quitting antidepressants, patients reported symptoms like dizziness, nausea and vertigo, but that they remained, on average, 'below the threshold for clinically significant' withdrawal. Dr. Sameer Jauhar, one of the authors, said the new analysis should reassure both patients and prescribers. 'The messaging that came out in 2019 was all antidepressants can cause this and this can happen in this proportion of people, and that just doesn't survive any scientific scrutiny,' said Dr. Jauhar, a professor of psychiatry at Imperial College London. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
