Reacción a "One in six people who stop taking antidepressants experience symptoms after stopping them"

The extraordinary increase in the prescription of antidepressants should alert us to how we are transforming human and everyday discomfort into a medical condition that we treat with psychotropic drugs. A treatment that, logically, causes adverse effects during its consumption, but also upon withdrawal, a problem that has barely been given visibility until a few years ago.

This meta-analysis aims to measure the incidence of withdrawal syndrome when antidepressants are discontinued. It analyzes the results of 79 previous studies characterized by heterogeneity in design and data collection, and mostly aimed at measuring the efficacy of antidepressants and, secondarily and variably, their adverse effects. The meta-analysis does not provide data on crucial aspects that influence the results, such as the method of discontinuing antidepressants, previous treatment durations, or their doses.

With all these biases, the results are underestimated, especially when compared to previous reviews indicating that more than half of the people who take antidepressants experience withdrawal syndrome when trying to stop them.

It is noteworthy that throughout the article this phenomenon is referred to as "discontinuation symptoms" (a euphemism commonly used by the pharmaceutical companies that market them) and not as "withdrawal syndrome," which is the usual term to describe the physical and psychological response after reducing or stopping substances that act on the central nervous system, as is the case with antidepressants.