Ann 💜

Antidepressant side effects.

[Jed Shlackman, MS Ed @jedishaman]

Antidepressant medications can temporarily improve one's mood; but so can drinking beer or snorting cocaine, and just like those recreational drugs, over time it damages the brain and other organs to continue regularly consuming those substances & often leads to worse depression.

[Angie Peacock, MSW, CPC @angpeacock1111]

@ompsychiatrist @washingtonpost With all due respect - the stories of success are all we hear about. The stories of harm have been silenced for decades.

[Sam Hall @samhall404]

These are the desperate, agonised cries of hundreds of thousands of people trapped in severe akathisia from drugs taken as prescribed (antidepressants, antipsychotics, antiemetics, anticonvulsants and antibiotics (fluoroquinolones etc). They are in urgent need of real help, yet many know that going to a hospital often results in being misdiagnosed and given… more drugs. The very thing that fuels this neurological fire even further. What should be a place of safety becomes another layer of torment for a nervous system that is already a raging inferno.

Please, help these people. Help me.
People are dying from this. They are taking their own lives and leaving devastated families behind to pick up the pieces. This cannot continue to be ignored.

[Inner Compass Initiative @_innercompass]

“I never got to experience the full range of emotions and feelings of being human … ”

“Anytime I tried to go off [SSRIs], it would throw me into such a severe panic.”

“Now I'm dealing with the realization that I've missed a lot of life.”

Nobody told Cameron LaBar that the side effects of SSRIs would completely change his life.

Take 2 minutes to hear his story:

“When you talk to a doctor about that, a very common response is: that is a part of your underlying condition, you probably need the medication.”

“It wasn't until I stumbled across a video from Mark [Horowitz] that suggested that these [symptoms aren’t] part of who I am.”

“It took me 20 years to find that out.”

“I've been tapering for about 3 years now.”

“I'm down to about 7.5 milligrams of Lexapro.”

“It's probably gonna take me another 3 to 5 years to get the rest of the way [off] given how these drugs work.”

“But imagine the fury, the rage of [realizing] I could have figured this out a lot sooner.”

“I could have functioned as a human being all along.”

“I could have had friendships.”

“I could have not been numb.”

“These are the things that I'm now struggling with.”

“A lot of my experience, year after year, has been discounted and affected by these drugs.”

If you had a similar experience to Cameron with psychiatric drugs, you are not alone.

We want to hear your story.

Share your experience in a reply below, or share a video and tag us @_innercompass.

@MAHA_Institute

[Monica @InsularEntropy]

@agenturban Antidepressants driving someone to commit homicide when they otherwise would have never done it is a thing and is very real: https://t.co/qzW4wmTqFk

[Monica @InsularEntropy]

@agenturban Here’s a public service announcement about akathisia. It happens with almost every single class of psychiatric drugs, including SSRIs: https://t.co/thivmz2Vdr

[Chris Masterjohn @ChrisMasterjohn]

No one will EVER make sense of this until they realize that

1) THE role of serotonin is to adjust ALL mitochondria to situations of absolute or relative hypoxia both inside the body and throughout every tissue of the body

2) SSRIs block half of this because it requires both extracellular and mitochondrial serotonin receptors and serotonin entry into the mitochondria and SSRIs prevent serotonin from entering the cell

3) The placenta has the HIGHEST expression of the serotonin transporter

4) In pregnant women THE GREATEST effect of SSRIs is to deprive the fetus of placentral serotonin transport

5) This is because until the baby is born it is in a CONSTANT STATE OF HYPOXIA not because of absolute deprivation of oxygen but because its source of oxygen is not its lungs and therefore its oxygen delivery has to be completely rewired until this is suddenly reversed the second it is born

and

6) SSRIs are therefore drugs that induce mitochondrial dysfunction in babies

[Camus @newstart_2024]

RFK Jr. just delivered a raw wake-up call as HHS Secretary:

America isn’t just facing a mental health crisis — we’re facing a dependency crisis driven by over-medicalization.

The numbers he laid out are staggering:
• 1 in 6 adults on antidepressants
• 1 in 10 children on psychiatric medication
• Over 30% of college students using them in the past year

He announced concrete action: new national guidance pushing non-drug treatments first, real informed consent, and — for the first time — proper training and payment for safe tapering and deprescribing.

He was especially blunt about withdrawal, sharing that for many it’s far worse and longer-lasting than even heroin withdrawal.

Similar trends are visible across Europe and the UK, where antidepressant prescriptions have reached record highs in recent years. For decades we’ve defaulted to pills as the first answer. This is one of the clearest signals yet that over-reliance on psychiatric medication is finally being questioned at the highest levels.

Too many people feel trapped on these drugs with little guidance on how to safely reduce or stop them.

What do you think — is it time we seriously rethink how freely these drugs are prescribed, especially to children and young adults?

[Laura Delano @LauraDelano]

“I can’t feel love for my own mother, which is the hardest thing on earth.”

“To remove someone’s ability to emotionally connect with another human being is a crime against humanity.”

@lololizzle is describing a side of Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) that is not often discussed: the loss of emotional capacity itself.

The emotional – and even spiritual – capacity to feel bonded to another person is not secondary  to being human.

It is the most primal, fundamental part of it.

It is what makes love, art, music, friendship, community, and meaning possible.

[Daniel Owens @dsowens17]

After seeing so many clinicians on here sneering and dismissing people desperately trying to sound the alarm about being harmed by psychiatric drugs, it is gratifying to see these same people suddenly jump to attention now that the winds are changing and there is growing pressure for change.

Remember: you contributed to the backlash against SSRIs. If these issues had been quickly addressed long ago there would never have been a such a groundswell of opposition. Being ignored enrages and radicalises people.

But: Shout out to the many psychiatrists and other clinicians who DIDN'T sneer. Who listened and reflected. You are a credit to your profession and it gives me hope that things will change and patients' lived experiences will increasingly become integrated to create truly patient centred care.

[Antidepressant Risks @antideprisks]

From Hyde Park, London, to a Global Movement: Marking Stolen Lives on Prescribed Harm Day.

Our latest article on Mad in America explores how Prescribed Harm Day is being marked around the world on 29th July 2026. Bringing people together to remember, reflect, and raise awareness.

Read it here: https://t.co/BlP4O3w6tk

[Dr. Roger McFillin @DrMcFillin]

When you drug a person into a state where they no longer feel too much, you have not treated their “mental illness”. You have disconnected them from what their body and soul have been trying to communicate. You have interfered with nature.

[Tiffany Ryder @HCLibertyLab]

A woman who shows up at her doctor's office exhausted, anxious, and hollowed out gets a prescription, not a conversation about her workload, her marriage, her kids, her sleep, or whether the life she's been sold is the one she actually wanted.

One in four women over 40 are now on antidepressants. Is this what "having it all" looks like?

We told women to be different and do different in the interest of progress, but when it doesn't work, we drug them and tell them THEY are what's broken, instead of admitting we gave them bad advice.

It's worth asking, who benefits from this approach? Cause it's not women.

[Inner Compass Initiative @_innercompass]

“Nobody told me that these drugs can cause serious physical health problems.”

“Disable sexual function.”

“Worsen emotional distress and cognition.”

“And in some cases, increase suicidal thoughts.”

This shocking testimony will change your entire perspective on the “mental health crisis.”

Laura Delano was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 13.

She was told she would need meds for the rest of her life.

From that point on, her list of diagnoses grew longer and longer.

“2 meds became 3, 4, 5.”

But her life didn’t improve.

In fact, the exact opposite happened.

“My life unraveled.”

“I gained 70 pounds.”

“Developed chronic health issues.”

“Was constantly exhausted.”

“And became increasingly anxious and suicidal.”

“Nobody told me that the medications I’d been on for years were approved by the FDA based on clinical trials lasting, on average, 6-12 weeks.”

“Or that the safety and efficacy of taking multiple psychiatric drugs at once has never been properly established.”

“Nobody told me that what I experienced whenever I missed a dose or tried to stop a med was withdrawal symptoms—not a return of an underlying condition.”

Her terrible experience with the mental health industry drove her to a suicide attempt.

Then, she questioned everything she thought she knew about the “mental health crisis” in America.

“23.4% of American adults, 61.5 million people, have a psychiatric diagnosis, including 1 in 3 young adults.”

“Suicide rates in adults increased 35% from 1999 to 2018.”

“From 2007 to 2021, the suicide rate among youth aged 10 to 24 increased by 62%.”

“The suicide rate among children ages 10 to 14, more than tripled from 2007 to 2018.”

“In 2023, nearly 50,000 Americans died by suicide, the highest number ever recorded.”

“At the same time… more Americans than ever are receiving mental health treatment.”

“Approximately 61 million adults and 4 million adolescents are now taking psychiatric medications.”

“The financial costs are staggering.”

“In 2023 alone, Medicare and Medicaid combined spent $36.6 billion on psychiatric drugs.”

“That’s $335 billion over the past decade—with no measurable population-level improvement in mental health.”

“What if our nation’s mental health crisis is in significant part a crisis of unintended consequences of treatment-caused harm misread as illness, generating more treatment, more disability, and more despair?”

Now, countless victims of this crisis of over-medicalization are coming forward to reveal that nobody told them about the harms of psychiatric medication.

And if you have your own experience dealing with this crisis, we want to hear your story, too.

You are not alone.

Follow @_innercompass

[PFS Foundation @PFSFoundation]

David Healy, MD, Chief Scientific Officer at Data Based Medicine, weighs in on last week's First World Congress on PSSD, PFS and PAS #PostFinasterideSyndrome https://t.co/WBlngCpP2U

[Kevin Kelly @IT_Guru74]

Like I said, I want to make Akathisia the A word of not just psychiatry, but of the entire pharmaceutical industry. We need accountability. They need to start taking care of the injured and develop screening to prevent it. If they can’t, they need to stop selling their harm.

[fireworks and confetti @fworksconfetti]

Was moaning it feels too warm for April yesterday but made the mistake of switching to a summer duvet last night only to find myself shivering so not sure about heatwave but yup, Ladbible, we are indeed having weather.

Anyway, sweating buckets is definitely a thing with SSRIs. In the first few years on paroxetine I would sweat so much while sleeping I'd wake up and the sheets were soaked through. Also regularly had to change my clothes in the daytime due to sweat so with that and the sheets it often meant there was twice as much laundr to do.

Something your doctor probably didn't warn you about, particularly the "You may find yourself spending more money on laundry detergent" bit.

[Steven Phillips, MD @StevePhillipsMD]

I’ve learned many important lessons in my roughly 30 yrs of medical practice. Here’s one:

Believe the patient.

The overwhelming majority are not only telling the truth, they’re the only ones who can speak their truth.

And it’s been such a privilege to be part of it.

[RxISK @RxISK]

New video from the RxISK team on Isotretinoin and safety. Your thoughts/ comments welcome..#isotretinoin #patientsafety https://t.co/RRTJ4vyegk