So the solution is prescribing something that has a lot of unpleasant side-effects for a lot of people? Medication that if you don't take will have SEVERE withdrawal symptoms?
I'm not trying to minimize the problems other people have had with withdrawal at all, just saying that it's possible to have a variety of different outcomes being on and off of them.
I wonder why you say 'SEVERE' so severely. It doesn't sound like you have any direct experience of this. I had to come off them and it wasn't a problem. My biggest fear, and it was huge, was that the depression would return. It didn't.
I had horrible withdrawal effects coming off lexapro/escitalopram, it was literally the worst experience of my life. I spent a month with maxed-out anxiety, feeling like I was going to die any moment, waking up at night with electric shocks running through my body, etc. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
OK, that's an SSRI which is what I had to come off (prozac), with no major issues.
I'm not at all claiming it's a fun ride for everyone, just giving my one data point that it's not inevitably awful for absolutely everyone. Sorry you had to deal with it!
> It doesn't sound like you have any direct experience of this
It doesn't matter if I have personal experience with this although I do. A very bad personal experience with the mental health service that was provided as well as the side effects I was talking about.
> I had to come off them and it wasn't a problem.
This just comes off as ignorant, there is established literature on the withdrawal effects. I was not speculating or spreading FUD. They are real, documented and more common than your anecdotal lucky experience
So your bad experience is data, my ok experience is anecdote and is worth less than yours. Gotcha.
'I had no problem' means that bad problems aren't inevitable, which opposed the totally unqualified 'SEVERE' claim - they aren't always 'SEVERE'. That doesn't discount anyone's experiences when things do go bad as I acknowledged here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32169654 - I'm not dissing anyone's experiences.
They can however prescribe basically harmless pills that do more or less nothing. Low dose vitamin pills are sometimes used for this purpose.
Whether or not it's ethical for a doctor to tell a depression patient that the depression is caused by a treatable vitamin deficiency is another matter. Then again, maybe it really is caused by a lack of micronutients. After all we really don't understand depression very well.