Real nightmare of coming off antidepressants

Millions warned they face ‘severe’ side-effects

MILLIONS of people face severe side- effects when trying to come off antidepressants, a major review has concluded.

For years health officials have played down the difficulty of withdrawing from antidepressants, insisting side-effects are ‘mild’ and last no more than a week or two.

But a review of medical evidence today shows 56 per cent of people suffer withdrawal effects if they try to come off the drugs.

The worst-hit experience nausea, anxiety, insomnia and agitation, with many people put back on antidepressants as doctors mistake the symptoms for a relapse of depression itself.

The issue is contentious – just last week a senior psychiatrist resigned from his Government position after he received sustained abuse for playing down the side-effects of withdrawal.

The new study, in the Journal of Addictive Behaviours, suggests of the seven million people taking antidepressants in England Drug Dependence, called for guidelines by NHS watchdog NICE to be rewritten in light of the findings.

Researcher Dr James Davies, of Roehampton University, said: ‘This new review of the research reveals what many patients have known for years – that withdrawal from antidepressants often causes severe, debilitating symptoms which can last for weeks, months or longer.

‘Existing NICE guidelines fail to acknowledge how common withdrawal is and wrongly suggest that it usually resolves within one week.

‘This leads many doctors to misdiagnose withdrawal symptoms, often as relapse, resulting in much unnecessary and harmful long-term prescribing.’

The review involved evidence from 24 existing studies, including 5,300 patients.

The findings have been submitted to Public Health England, which is conducting a review into prescription pill dependency.

That review was triggered by a campaign by the Daily Mail raising awareness of patients left dependent on drugs through no fault of their own.

According to the NHS, 16 per cent of adults – seven million people in England – took the drugs in 2016-17. This is one of the highest rates in the world.

And the length of time people are kept on the drugs has soared, with one in four users taking the pills for an average of 15 months compared with eight months 20 years ago.

Dr Davies believes part of the problem is patients being left on the pills for years because they find it so hard to withdraw. If there was wider awareness of the withdrawal issue, fewer patients would be prescribed the drugs in the first place, he said.

If the NHS reduces prescriptions, he said, it could cut the £250million annual bill spent on antidepressants alone and instead put money into counselling, talking therapies and other proven treatments.

NICE said that it was reviewing its guidance.

THROUGHOUT history doctors have made disastrous mistakes, prescribing treatments fashionable at the time – from draining patients’ blood to administering toxic medicines – which have turned out to do more harm than good.

But as a Mail campaign has long argued, never has a medical misjudgement affected more patients than the modern fashion for dishing out anti-depressants like Smarties, too often with little awareness of the longterm consequences of addiction, with its hugely distressing side-effects.

Now an authoritative report underlines the massive scale of the problem. Published in the Journal of Addictive Behaviours, it finds that of the staggering 7million people taking anti-depressants in England alone, 4million are at risk of withdrawal symptoms – with some 1.8million likely to suffer severely and 1.7million for whom the effects can last at least three months.

Says Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drugs: ‘Medical guidelines in this area should be urgently updated to reflect the fact that anti- depressant withdrawal is much more common, severe and long-lasting than previously stated.’

In light of the new data, the review cannot come a moment too soon. Meanwhile, doctors must surely think twice before prescribing drugs that could potentially cause harm.