Excellent points. In addition to the hazards you cite, the reflexive prescription of such drugs to teens medicalizes their distress, communicating that they lack the inner self-healing resources to overcome difficulties with the aid of supportive professionals and others. Drugs deprive them of the growth in self-esteem and confidence in knowing that they surmounted their challenges, which is how personal growth occurs in all of us. If, on the other hand, their angst reflects a medical disorder, only a doctor can cure it and they must depend on the doctor and drugs. But as a long-practicing psychiatrist I have another gripe: the incompetence of swarms of psychotherapists who refer clients to MDs for drugs because of their own clinical ineffectiveness. For sure the assumptions of psychiatry must be challenged across the board, but so too must the evidently inadequate training of many therapists, who form a pipeline along with PCPs into the psychiatric prescription racket.
Agree on every point! Well said. I can add this... therapists are coerced by fear to refer patients to drugs. They are told ethical practice requires such a referral. It's a corrupt and dangerous system.
This is a hugely important article. Having taken ssri s for 20 years, i conform that all this is true. Luckily, i took them as an adult, because the effects would have been even worse had i taken them as a child. Their effects persist long after you stop them, yet most doctors refuse to ackowledge this. When i told my psychiatrist this, she claimed that was impossible and mocked me. Yet, clearly, i am not the only one to have noticed this. Thank you for this important work.
Thank you for posting this article. I hope someone or several people will do some in-depth investigating of the troubling issues you raise. The prospects of permanent sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria from common prescribed drugs are a serious harm for everyone who takes them and more people need to know.
I think many will dismiss this as impossible or overblown, but I promise you these harms are hiding in plain sight.
I went on high doses of antidepressants in middle school and I wasn't informed about any side effects. I was old enough to have some level of attraction and sexuality, but not old enough to have fully developed in that way.
Over the next few years of high school, everything basically vanished. By 19 or 20, I could no longer experience attraction or sexual function at all. Again, I had never heard of sexual issues or emotional blunting from meds. I assumed that eventually I would meet someone and the spark would return, but it never did.
By 23, I was getting scared. I decided that I would likely have to accept that I had become asexual, and there was nothing I could do about it. When asked about Depression by a psychiatrist, I told him I was depressed because I thought I was asexual and I didn't want to be. He laughed and said that was statistically very unlikely, but he did not tell me that my medication could be causing this problem.
Time went on and I became further disabled by the meds. I had gained a lot of weight, I slept 12-15 hours a day, I thought about food all of the time, my hands shook, my mouth was dry, etc. I assumed these issues were unique to me. I attributed them to character flaws, mental illness, and health issues.
By 28, I realized I had never been helped by medication and I no longer had faith in the system. I came off my antidepressants. Many issues like my weight and sleep have improved, but my sexuality has never returned.
I'm in my 30s now, and I only found out about the asexuality link with antidepressants due to a tweet by Dr. McFillin. I felt physically sick reading it and realizing what happened to me. This tweet prompted me to start Googling and I discovered PSSD.
Over the years, I can count on a single hand the amount of times I tried to address this subject. How was I supposed to explain it when I didn't understand it myself? Doctors think PSSD isn't real, but it's simply that many of us aren't telling.
I'm starting to think there are a lot of people like me out there. For example, my friend is in her 40s and has never been interested in sex/dating. She went on meds as a teen and plans to remain on them for life.
It is unacceptable that there has been little attention given to this topic. I see this issue getting worse until someone decides to step in and demand that we re-evaluate prescribing psychiatric medications to developing brains.
"We wouldn't accept such risks with other medical interventions for non-life-threatening conditions in children. Why do we make an exception for psychiatric medications?"
The case can be made that we do take significant risks of life-altering harms when we inject babies, children, and teens with multiple doses of multiple vaccines. And I believe this very practice sets the stage for the uncritical acceptance of a doctor's prescription of SSRIs for teens. The white coat class are seen as the protectors of children from dangerous pathogens (that really are not that dangerous for the vast majority of kids), so of course they would not do anything to harm children.
Thank you for your feedback, and I'm happy to explain. As you may know, a core tenet of FAIR in Medicine's mission is to "support the scientific method, viewpoint diversity, and rigorous inquiry in the search for objective truth, and promote a culture of respectful, open debate":
We believe that intolerance is the enemy of free and open inquiry and respectful scientific debate.
In fact, FAIR's advocacy for the rights of biological women and girls in sports and other protected spaces is premised on the need for objective scientific truth. However, we also recognize the need to advocate for rigorous scientific inquiry beyond issues relating to gender. This series is part of that effort.
This article has many excellent points. I do not believe SSRIs are justified in teens in any way. Medicalizing normal and teaching youth there is a pill for all ailments does not lend itself to independence and success in adulthood. The idea of all these kids being 'gender dysphoric' though is preposterous to me. The diagnosis is bogus today and handed out like candy (although a few might actually suffer form this mental condition). It is highly subjected, has changed through the years to capture more victims, often comes from young people indoctrinated via peers and social media and culture, is trending in medicine , etc...saying you are 'gender dysphoric' and being so are different things in today's world. Saying you are so gets access to drugs. Teens know this. That is all that is needed to get a prescription. Youth are taught to game the system on YouTube, with peers, etc. Having language to attribute feelings to can be dangerous in and of itself and 'gender dysphoria' serves that purpose well. Pharma is drooling.
That being said the points made about dumbing emotions and post SSRI sexual dysfunction cannot be overlooked. It is hard to know what comes first - the drugs for depression and anxiety or the drugs to 'transition'. Many of these young people become worse off on cross sex hormones and then are readily prescribed SSRIs. Testosterone though increases libido in females and causes aggressive behaviors. Spend any time on YouTube and the libido talk is there. (I have written about it). Who knows what the cocktail of cross sex hormones combined with SSRIs does but it cannot be good.
The cocktail hardly stops there. Females are often encouraged to go on finasteride for hair loss? Males uses this as part of transitioning. Often HIV drugs are encouraged.
Finasteride has a horrific risk profile. I wrote about it here:
HPV vaccination (high in aluminum) can cause anxiety. Anxiety can lead to seeking out menta health treatment, perhaps resulting in the prescribing of SSRIs. If you suspect that SSRIs alone can contribute to gender dysphoria, imagine what the combination of HPV vaccination (with who knows what impact on the nervous systems and reproductive systems of developing adolescents) and SSRIs can do.
Excellent article. I am thankful that my daughter who had therapy as a teenager was not put into the pipeline of drug therapies. This is quite scary and I hope that there is rigorous investigation into these drugs. Having taken them myself for a relatively short period of time I experienced the sexual dysfunction and loss of emotions.
Excellent points. In addition to the hazards you cite, the reflexive prescription of such drugs to teens medicalizes their distress, communicating that they lack the inner self-healing resources to overcome difficulties with the aid of supportive professionals and others. Drugs deprive them of the growth in self-esteem and confidence in knowing that they surmounted their challenges, which is how personal growth occurs in all of us. If, on the other hand, their angst reflects a medical disorder, only a doctor can cure it and they must depend on the doctor and drugs. But as a long-practicing psychiatrist I have another gripe: the incompetence of swarms of psychotherapists who refer clients to MDs for drugs because of their own clinical ineffectiveness. For sure the assumptions of psychiatry must be challenged across the board, but so too must the evidently inadequate training of many therapists, who form a pipeline along with PCPs into the psychiatric prescription racket.
Agree on every point! Well said. I can add this... therapists are coerced by fear to refer patients to drugs. They are told ethical practice requires such a referral. It's a corrupt and dangerous system.
This is a hugely important article. Having taken ssri s for 20 years, i conform that all this is true. Luckily, i took them as an adult, because the effects would have been even worse had i taken them as a child. Their effects persist long after you stop them, yet most doctors refuse to ackowledge this. When i told my psychiatrist this, she claimed that was impossible and mocked me. Yet, clearly, i am not the only one to have noticed this. Thank you for this important work.
Thank you for posting this article. I hope someone or several people will do some in-depth investigating of the troubling issues you raise. The prospects of permanent sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria from common prescribed drugs are a serious harm for everyone who takes them and more people need to know.
Thank you for sharing this important information. I hope our new NIH director will begin work in this area.
"The work of Dr. Lisa Littman demonstrates an unprecedented 4,000% increase in adolescent girls seeking gender treatment in the past decade"
In the UK it went from 34 boys in 2009 to 557 in 2016, also an explosion. The girls rose even more rapidly, from 17 to about twice the boys' number.
It's bad for both sexes (some discussion is in the Fell and Lahl documentaries, the Lost boys and, for girls, the detransition diaries).
Numb is better than death and better than intolerable pain, but not as good as drug-free life, even with its ups and downs.
I think many will dismiss this as impossible or overblown, but I promise you these harms are hiding in plain sight.
I went on high doses of antidepressants in middle school and I wasn't informed about any side effects. I was old enough to have some level of attraction and sexuality, but not old enough to have fully developed in that way.
Over the next few years of high school, everything basically vanished. By 19 or 20, I could no longer experience attraction or sexual function at all. Again, I had never heard of sexual issues or emotional blunting from meds. I assumed that eventually I would meet someone and the spark would return, but it never did.
By 23, I was getting scared. I decided that I would likely have to accept that I had become asexual, and there was nothing I could do about it. When asked about Depression by a psychiatrist, I told him I was depressed because I thought I was asexual and I didn't want to be. He laughed and said that was statistically very unlikely, but he did not tell me that my medication could be causing this problem.
Time went on and I became further disabled by the meds. I had gained a lot of weight, I slept 12-15 hours a day, I thought about food all of the time, my hands shook, my mouth was dry, etc. I assumed these issues were unique to me. I attributed them to character flaws, mental illness, and health issues.
By 28, I realized I had never been helped by medication and I no longer had faith in the system. I came off my antidepressants. Many issues like my weight and sleep have improved, but my sexuality has never returned.
I'm in my 30s now, and I only found out about the asexuality link with antidepressants due to a tweet by Dr. McFillin. I felt physically sick reading it and realizing what happened to me. This tweet prompted me to start Googling and I discovered PSSD.
Over the years, I can count on a single hand the amount of times I tried to address this subject. How was I supposed to explain it when I didn't understand it myself? Doctors think PSSD isn't real, but it's simply that many of us aren't telling.
I'm starting to think there are a lot of people like me out there. For example, my friend is in her 40s and has never been interested in sex/dating. She went on meds as a teen and plans to remain on them for life.
It is unacceptable that there has been little attention given to this topic. I see this issue getting worse until someone decides to step in and demand that we re-evaluate prescribing psychiatric medications to developing brains.
"We wouldn't accept such risks with other medical interventions for non-life-threatening conditions in children. Why do we make an exception for psychiatric medications?"
The case can be made that we do take significant risks of life-altering harms when we inject babies, children, and teens with multiple doses of multiple vaccines. And I believe this very practice sets the stage for the uncritical acceptance of a doctor's prescription of SSRIs for teens. The white coat class are seen as the protectors of children from dangerous pathogens (that really are not that dangerous for the vast majority of kids), so of course they would not do anything to harm children.
What does investigating drugs have to do with your mission of combatting intolerance?
Hi Anna,
Thank you for your feedback, and I'm happy to explain. As you may know, a core tenet of FAIR in Medicine's mission is to "support the scientific method, viewpoint diversity, and rigorous inquiry in the search for objective truth, and promote a culture of respectful, open debate":
https://www.fairforall.org/fair-in-medicine/
We believe that intolerance is the enemy of free and open inquiry and respectful scientific debate.
In fact, FAIR's advocacy for the rights of biological women and girls in sports and other protected spaces is premised on the need for objective scientific truth. However, we also recognize the need to advocate for rigorous scientific inquiry beyond issues relating to gender. This series is part of that effort.
This article has many excellent points. I do not believe SSRIs are justified in teens in any way. Medicalizing normal and teaching youth there is a pill for all ailments does not lend itself to independence and success in adulthood. The idea of all these kids being 'gender dysphoric' though is preposterous to me. The diagnosis is bogus today and handed out like candy (although a few might actually suffer form this mental condition). It is highly subjected, has changed through the years to capture more victims, often comes from young people indoctrinated via peers and social media and culture, is trending in medicine , etc...saying you are 'gender dysphoric' and being so are different things in today's world. Saying you are so gets access to drugs. Teens know this. That is all that is needed to get a prescription. Youth are taught to game the system on YouTube, with peers, etc. Having language to attribute feelings to can be dangerous in and of itself and 'gender dysphoria' serves that purpose well. Pharma is drooling.
That being said the points made about dumbing emotions and post SSRI sexual dysfunction cannot be overlooked. It is hard to know what comes first - the drugs for depression and anxiety or the drugs to 'transition'. Many of these young people become worse off on cross sex hormones and then are readily prescribed SSRIs. Testosterone though increases libido in females and causes aggressive behaviors. Spend any time on YouTube and the libido talk is there. (I have written about it). Who knows what the cocktail of cross sex hormones combined with SSRIs does but it cannot be good.
The cocktail hardly stops there. Females are often encouraged to go on finasteride for hair loss? Males uses this as part of transitioning. Often HIV drugs are encouraged.
Finasteride has a horrific risk profile. I wrote about it here:
https://margox.substack.com/p/sometime-hair-does-not-grow-back?r=1kuq0
HPV vaccination (high in aluminum) can cause anxiety. Anxiety can lead to seeking out menta health treatment, perhaps resulting in the prescribing of SSRIs. If you suspect that SSRIs alone can contribute to gender dysphoria, imagine what the combination of HPV vaccination (with who knows what impact on the nervous systems and reproductive systems of developing adolescents) and SSRIs can do.
Wow
Something I never even considered. Thank you.
Excellent article. I am thankful that my daughter who had therapy as a teenager was not put into the pipeline of drug therapies. This is quite scary and I hope that there is rigorous investigation into these drugs. Having taken them myself for a relatively short period of time I experienced the sexual dysfunction and loss of emotions.