Doctors across Britain will soon be told to warn millions of patients taking antidepressants that ending treatment can cause “severe” adverse effects and last much longer than previously advised.
“We are currently updating our guidelines on the diagnosis and management of depression in adults,” a spokesman for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) told a reporter for the Daily Mail midweek. The newspaper called it a “major U-turn” in policy. After months of reporting by British media on the scale of the problem, with more than 7 million in Britain taking antidepressants (one of the highest per capita among OECD countries), the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned that the effects of ending treatment can, in fact, be “severe” and last for weeks, even months.
