The main aim of treatment with antidepressants is to relieve the symptoms of severe depression, such as feeling very down and exhausted, and prevent them from coming back. They are meant to make you feel emotionally stable again and help you to follow a normal daily routine.
Some antidepressants can also cause feelings of agitation, restlessness and detachment. These feelings may resemble symptoms of anxiety and may add to, rather than relieve, feelings of hopelessness and despair. Some people may become suicidal or violent.
These drugs target serotonin, a chemical that carries messages between nerve cells in the brain and has been dubbed the 'pleasure chemical'. One of the widely-reported side effects of SSRIs is 'blunting', where patients report feeling emotionally dull and no longer finding things as pleasurable as they used to.
Both SSRIs and SNRIs work on chemical messengers (or neurotransmitters) in your brain, including serotonin and norepinephrine, which may play a role in anxiety, sleep, mood, and general feelings of well-being. Taking an SSRI or SNRI increases the amount of serotonin and/or norepinephrine available in your brain.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
SSRIs are a type of medication people may use as a treatment for depression. People may also use SSRIs to treat mental health conditions that can cause intrusive thoughts, such as: OCD. PTSD.
SSRIs and SNRIs increase the production of brain chemicals that help regulate your mood and stress response. This tends to make the medications especially effective for easing anxiety.
Approximately 70 percent of people taking SSRIs suffer from sexual side effects. But these drugs may also compromise the ability to feel love.
When you're benefiting from antidepressants, you should feel: A mood that is less depressed, less irritable, happier, and more content. Excitement for and pleasure in everyday activities and events. An ability to regulate your eating patterns without eating too much or too little.
On antidepressant medication, it is possible that you might experience a sense of feeling numb and less like yourself. Though the symptoms of depression have decreased, there may be a sense that other emotional responses – laughing or crying, for example – are more difficult to experience.
It can take a while for people to adjust to a new antidepressant and sometimes side effects can disrupt everyday life. Getting up to go to work each day can feel impossible. Several people we interviewed had sleep problems in the first few weeks and found it difficult to think or concentrate.
Emotional blunting is also considered a potential side effect of antidepressants, in particular SSRI antidepressants, and has been reported in multiple case reports and clinical studies.
Antidepressants were lauded back in the 80s as the miracle cure for major depression, but as more and more clinical trials are revealing, as many as 50% of the patients who were prescribed antidepressants did not experience a successful result—on antidepressants but still depressed.
Antidepressants don't just treat depression–they can make us more sociable, too.
“It appears that SSRI antidepressants rewire areas of the brain that are important for thinking and feeling, as well as operating the autonomic nervous system,” said Koliatsos. Axons are long, filament-shaped extensions of neurons that, together with myelin, are the main constituents of nerves.
This is because antidepressants can increase your energy and motivation levels, which may be very low while you are depressed. Early in your treatment, you may experience more energy and motivation before your feelings of depression have started to lift. This might mean you have enough energy act on suicidal urges.
Some patients taking SSRIs develop insomnia, skin rashes, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach upset, nausea, or diarrhea. These problems are usually temporary or mild or both.
Treatment with antidepressant medications can cause difficulty with sexual function in the domains of sexual desire, arousal, and orgasm. Rates of sexual dysfunction with antidepressant use are very high, particularly during the adjustment phase.
A common side-effect among anti-depressants users is feeling emotionally numb or experiencing emotional blunting. Their hobbies are no longer fun. And their sex life is not as pleasurable as it used to. Researchers estimate that between 40% to 60% of people who take antidepressants experience this side effect.
A common complaint among men using antidepressants is delayed ejaculation or difficulty reaching orgasm. This because the SSRIs or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors used in antidepressants influence the neurotransmitters in the brain, causing a delay in ejaculation.
Expert: "It looks like a lot of what gives people relief is that they're feeling whatever the opposite of neuroticism is." (Health.com) -- People who take antidepressants such as Paxil often say they feel less stressed and more outgoing, lively, and confident.
Perhaps the fundamental reason why antidepressants are so widely prescribed and used is that they fit with the 'medical model' of mental illness, which has become the standard view in western culture. This model sees depression as a medical condition which can be “fixed” in the same way as a physical injury or illness.
It's best to avoid combining antidepressants and alcohol. It may worsen your symptoms, and it can be dangerous. If you mix antidepressants and alcohol: You may feel more depressed or anxious.
Nearly half of patients on all types of monoaminergic antidepressants report emotional blunting,6 and it is associated with serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) therapy as follows: among 161 patients, 46% reported a narrowed range of affect, 21% reported an inability to cry, and 19% reported apathy.