Guardian Australia called for individuals to share their experiences with antidepressant withdrawal. Hundreds of Australians responded, detailing debilitating symptoms like brain zaps, headaches, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. The callout highlighted the struggles many face when trying to stop taking antidepressants.
When Jade’s relationship ended at 24, she felt anxious, depressed and was suffering from stress-induced insomnia. She was prescribed antidepressants, but they didn’t seem to help and instead made her feel numb. When Jade told her GP that they made her feel “really blank inside”, the dose was doubled and she was prescribed different classes of antidepressants. The new drugs “made me feel an impending sense of doom,” Jade says.
She gradually stopped taking them and describes the withdrawal effects she suffered as the “worst experience of my life”. “Imagine feeling like you would never be happy again,” she says. “I wrote a suicide note, I flew to another city on my lunch break from work, I ended up in emergency. I have family members who still don’t talk to me to this day as a result.” She says she had never felt suicidal before taking the medication. Fifteen years after this experience, Jade was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed a different type of medication. She is one of hundreds of Australians to detail their experiences of withdrawing from antidepressant medications in response to a callout from Guardian Australia. Of the 776 readers who wrote in, 711 said they experienced withdrawal effects, with many describing debilitating symptoms.The most common symptoms described included brain zaps, headaches, anxiety, mood swings, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, confusion, difficulty concentrating, flu-like symptoms and heightened sensitivity to stimuli such as touch and noise. The callout specifically asked people to share whether they experienced side effects when attempting to stop taking antidepressant medications, so responses were skewed towards those who struggled to come off the drug
Antidepressants Withdrawal Side Effects Mental Health Australia
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