Nearly 25 million adults living in the United States take some form of antidepressant medication. Most antidepressants work by altering the brain’s chemistry to affect mood. Side effects of the drugs include nausea, weight gain, decreased libido, and anxiety, among others. A recent review suggests that antidepressant medication cessation is challenging for most people and may carry some risks due to discontinuation syndrome.

Discontinuation syndrome is a phenomenon that occurs with either abrupt or tapered antidepressant drug cessation. A recent study found that more than half of people taking antidepressants report having some difficulty – sometimes severe – when attempting to stop taking the drugs. Typical symptoms of discontinuation syndrome include flu-like symptoms, insomnia, nausea, imbalance, sensory disturbances, and hyperarousal. These symptoms, which vary from drug to drug and between individuals, typically appear within a few days of drug tapering or cessation and last two or more weeks.

The authors of the review suggested that physicians may prescribe these drugs without considering the potential side effects or without informing patients about the difficulties associated with drug cessation. They also presented a proposed schedule for tapering antidepressant drugs that varied according to drug class and brand.

Several non-pharmacological adjunct therapies have demonstrated effectiveness in modulating the symptoms of depression (including treatment-resistant depression), and include public health interventions, physical activity, dietary modification, meditation, sauna use, and light therapy, among others. Learn more about these approaches in our overview article on depression.

• Link to full study.

• Watch this clip in which Dr. Charles Raison suggests that lifestyle behaviors may be more effective than pharmacology in staving off depression.