A Generation on Antidepressants Searches for the Exit

[Jaybee00]

Good article on AD withdrawal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/opinion/antidepressants-ssris-side-effects-drugs-maha.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3lA.GRG5.lMNSo9A47dLc&smid=url-share

 

[PageofME]

Glad to see the NYT sobering up after decades of buying into whatever pharma-sponsored campaigns and psychiatrists told them.

Confessions of an Ad Writer: How I Helped Turn Atypical Antipsychotics into a Billion-Dollar Industry

How we redefined schizophrenia and helped drive one of the most successful (and concerning) pharmaceutical launches in history.

www.madinamerica.com

Two critical points are missing from the article: First, there's zero acknowledgment that the expansion of medicalizing and drugging everyday mental health would never have succeeded if mainstream media like the NYT hadn't eagerly pushed it as scientific progress. Second, blaming "undereducated GPs" for overprescribing is a classic scapegoat move that deflects from the real roots of the problem.

At the core of all this is psychiatrists' desire to be just as valued as somatic doctors and the unchecked corporate greed of the pharmaceutical industry.

 

[PageofME]

Last but not least: I doubt this shift in how we view 'antidepressants' would have been possible if pharmaceutical companies hadn't found a whole new market for their drugs among all these newly diagnosed ADHD and autism patients.

Studies Highlight Rapid Expansion of ADHD Drug Prescribing

This week Mad in America explores three new studies related to increasing psychiatric stimulant use. The first finds that psychiatric drug use among US Evidence from Canada, Australia, and the United States shows ADHD drug prescriptions rising across multiple populations, with increases...

www.madinamerica.com

 

[rvallee]

The public attention has finally moved the psychiatric profession to take steps to address deprescribing. But the medical system that puts people on these medications will need radical changes to carefully and safely lead people off. The question for patients is whom they will trust for guidance.

Oh, for sure, totally taking such steps, a thing that is totally really happening. The gaslighting reflex remains strong, likely stronger than ever. This is basically the perfect combination for the "exercise is the cure for everything" crowd, so there are only dumber days ahead.

Uncertainty over the origins of mental illness doesn’t have to be a problem for care; most clinicians would say that a full understanding of what’s happening in their patients’ brains is less important than recognizing which practical treatments make them feel better. Studies and clinical experience have shown a significant portion of people do better on antidepressants than off, at least in the short term.

That's actually the problem in a nutshell: the evidence-making process is the least effective part of medicine, it's genuinely awful, to the point of being uniquely awful in the professional world. This is textbook two wrongs not making a right, bringing the lowest quality process in all the professions to solve a lack of useful knowledge is like bringing a wet noodle to a knife fight.

But in the meantime, the effects of these drugs on the people who take them long term, and what happens when they stop, have gone woefully underexamined.

Considering they are usually meant to be taken long-term, in large part because of the withdrawal symptoms that the profession has foolishly decided to dismiss and deny, oof.

Reading this, it's genuinely hard to determine who is more at fault. This is really a case where everyone is equally wrong, and to end up equally wrong as this MAHA nonsense...