My decision to go off escitalopram, under supervision from my doctor, happened to coincide with a surge in public scrutiny of antidepressants, fueled in part by the Make America Healthy Again movement. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration convened a panel of experts<\/a> to discuss the potential risks of taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy. (A number of mental and reproductive health experts criticized<\/a> the panel, saying that members known to oppose the use of antidepressants during pregnancy, or at all, shared misinformation. These experts say<\/a> the medications are safe.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during his Senate confirmation hearing that he\u2019s known people who have \u201ca much worse time getting off SSRIs than people have getting off heroin,\u201d and President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February instructing the MAHA Commission to investigate whether antidepressants are being overprescribed<\/a> to children.\u00a0<\/p>\n Concerns about the effects of antidepressants, and the difficulty some people encounter in attempting to go off them, are also in the broader zeitgeist. The New York Times this spring profiled<\/a> Laura Delano, who runs a nonprofit dedicated to helping people reduce or quit psychiatric medications, as an example of how \u201can online DIY subculture focused on quitting psychiatric medications has expanded and begun to mature into a service industry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t And researchers are working to better understand the withdrawal symptoms that some people encounter when they try to give up antidepressants, with one recent systematic review<\/a> suggesting they\u2019re not as prevalent or severe as is often thought. (An important distinction: Some symptoms may be related to drug withdrawal, while others may indicate the recurrence of the anxiety or depression that people were taking medications to treat in the first place.)<\/p>\n From my perspective \u2014 both as someone who\u2019s taken antidepressants, and as a reporter at STAT \u2014 the conversation about the drugs demands nuance. The right medications can be life-changing, even life-saving, for people with mental health conditions, as the American Psychiatric Association and five other mental health groups noted in a joint statement<\/a> after Trump\u2019s executive order. It\u2019s also true that some people may experience side effects that they decide outweigh the potential benefits, and that tapering off medication can be tricky.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are health professionals far better equipped to parse the research on these issues than I am. But I can say that in my own experience, taking antidepressants was the right decision \u2014 and while going off them wasn\u2019t exactly easy, it\u2019s also proved possible.<\/p>\n I started taking escitalopram when I was living in New York in my early 30s, feeling alone and unmoored, like George Clooney drifting away into space in \u201cGravity.\u201d Clooney faces his fate with square-jawed resignation, but my despair and dread as I made scrambled eggs or squeezed onto a packed subway car was much less cinematic.<\/p>\n I\u2019d worried that antidepressants might make me feel numb. But I could still feel the full range of human emotions just fine; as my therapist put it, medication just took the edge off. With the volume on my harsh inner voice turned down, I could focus on making changes. I moved out of an apartment I\u2019d found on Craigslist, which I shared with two roommates who were already friends with each other when I moved in. They weren\u2019t mean; it was just as if I wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n I found a new apartment in a brownstone on a leafy block, a studio with an alcove and a bay window and a bathroom I shared with an artist from Estonia who filled it with plants and left a little welcome bundle of homemade gingerbread cookies in a plastic bag hanging from my doorknob. I went jogging with her, made new friends at a new job, felt my career taking shape. Relief: I existed after all.<\/p>\n I\u2019d go back and take Lexapro again in a heartbeat. But while I\u2019d never imagined staying on it forever, it turned out to be hard, once I\u2019d been feeling better for a long time, to figure out how and when to try going off.<\/p>\n I attempted it once, back in 2018, without proper supervision, mostly because I was abroad for a few months and hadn\u2019t figured out a plan for getting the medication overseas. (Definitely do not do this.) I\u2019d wake up every morning with a weight on my chest.<\/p>\n Back in the states, I went right back on medication. I got a dog<\/a>, drank less<\/a>, took an improv class, ate pie with friends straight from the box in the gold glow of the Lightning Field<\/a> in New Mexico. But after about a year, as I started to think about going off of it again, the pandemic hit: Not an ideal time to start experimenting with what else your brain can handle.<\/p>\n Soon I was also doing IVF, which meant I needed all the mental health help I could get. And when, at long last, I got pregnant, my doctors didn\u2019t think it wise to go off medication during such a vulnerable time. (The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says<\/a> that SSRIs are safe during pregnancy and that the risks of untreated depression are far greater for both parent and child.) The same logic applied to my first year postpartum, a period when so many women struggle with depression and anxiety.<\/p>\n \t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AdobeStock_389126219_Editorial_Use_Only-768x432.jpeg\")
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\n\t\t\t\tAn unusual FDA panel on antidepressant use during pregnancy elevated skeptics of the drugs<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AdobeStock_286948908-768x432.jpeg\")
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