Nick Alves was 19 years old, but his psychiatrist offered him Trinterix, an antidepressant, to treat moderate anxiety and depression after just a few short visits.
Going to the popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) (a class of drugs that also includes Prozac) doesn’t seem like a big deal at the time. However, when Alves unpigs six years later, he soon realized that his genitals were losing sense.
Over the course of weeks, he lost almost completely emotionally in the area.
“The area feels as sensitive as the skin behind my elbow,” said Alves, now a 27-year-old Massachusetts commercial truck driver.
He eventually learns that he suffers from sexual dysfunction (PSSD) after SSRI.
For many people, antidepressants are life-saving treatments, but in rare cases, they can cause debilitating side effects that last for years after stopping the drug.
Healthcare providers are increasingly aware of these SSRI risks, especially for young people who are prescribed at the rate of growth.
Snomed, the National Institutes of Health’s Official Source of Medical Terminology for the US Health System, Recognizes PSSD The legitimate obstacles this year are defined as “persistent sexual side effects,” including genital numbness and loss of sexual desire, which can last for weeks, months or years after halting antidepressants.” .
This condition is also recognized by official medical institutions. England and Australiaas well as European Medicine Agency.
All warning labels for common antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and more Lists sexual dysfunction after non-discussion As a possible side effect.
“People feel pretty bad,” said David Healy, a professor of psychiatry and professor of psychiatry at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.
Alves hopes he is being counselled differently in his teens and not taking the medication in such a hurry.
“I had no risk of taking my life or anything like that… I still had a lot of fun in life… I think I definitely should have [done] Therapy first and foremost,” he said. “Now, I have no fun with my hobbies, wandering around with my girlfriend, watching movies, playing video games, doing my favorite things. That’s exactly the same. Brick walls It’s like watching it.”
Research on PSSD has been limited so far, but there is concern.
A 2023 study from researchers at Howard and Tel Aviv University was retrospectively analyzed to chronicles of men seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction, comparing subjects who previously used SSRIs.
Even if you control age and comorbidities, research is still in SSRIS. Associated with a “significant” increased risk Erectile dysfunction. The researchers estimated that the likelihood of developing PSSD among men who used antidepressants is 1 in 216.
The numbers are particularly astounding, given the growing number of teens and young adults who are being prescribed antidepressants. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, prescription rates for people aged 12 to 25 years old I jumped about two-thirds From 2016 to 2022, partially due to the pandemic.
Newly appointed Director of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. We promised to investigate the side effects of antidepressants And youths can be overprescribed at first meetings with staff.
Philip, 19, from Maine, who asked to withhold his last name for privacy reasons, says he was only six years old when he started what he called a prescription drug “Doom Loop.” I did.
That’s when his kindergarten teacher flagged him by a doctor who prescribed attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and vyvanse, a stimulant commonly used to treat disorders.
When he stopped taking medication at the age of 12, he was depressed – the common temporary side effects of withdrawal from Vivanse – the doctor prescribed him Prozac.
Almost immediately, Philip experienced sexual paralysis and calmed his emotions. It’s been two years since he left Prozac and he feels the same way.
“All positive emotions are almost completely gone. I don’t feel the best anymore, but I felt all of them before the pills,” he thinks.
His doctors and therapists have all agreed to his PSSD diagnosis, but he was unable to provide relief from his symptoms.
“I think it just ruined my developing brain,” he said. “I was going through puberty, so it changed my blueprint… I feel like my body has nothing to go back and go back.”
Elliot Blaze, a 24-year-old dishwasher from Atlanta, Georgia, was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and struggled with an emotional outburst. Common symptoms Developmental disorders.
When he was 18, the child’s psychiatrist prescribed Zoloft to help with emotional regulation.
The drug “didn’t help at all,” so he stopped six months later. Soon he noticed the typical PSSD symptoms of genital numbness and lack of emotions.
“No one can really understand what it is. You lose all the sparks of life, all the fun of things, everything just bland,” Blaze said. Ta. “I feel like I’m dead inside.”
Adding humiliation to the injury is the fact that he has been diagnosed with autism and now believes he does not actually have ADHD.
“I never had any depression,” he told the Post. “They gave me almost Zoloft because of my autism.”
PSSD does not only affect boys and young men.
Rebekah Kane was prescribed Zoloft at the age of 15 for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) after her pediatrician referred her to a psychiatrist.
“There was no treatment or anything like that. It was immediately medication,” Kane, now 24, told the Post.
Soon, she experienced “complete” genital numbness and emotional numbness, which she polished aside.
“I wasn’t too worried about that because in my mind, getting rid of the OCD in that moment was a temporary trade-off,” she said.
After a year and a half of medication, 17-year-old Kane stopped Zoloft and headed to college to study pharmacology.
Her side effects never went away. They got worse with the retreat. She didn’t try any other antidepressants.
“I feel like I’ve been robotized, like the whole world has disappeared,” she said. “Ocd was bad, but it was better than losing my identity as a person completely.”
Despite potentially serious side effects, overexplaining young people is of concern to Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist and professor of human development at the University of Virginia.
“There’s definitely a problem,” said Jay, who specializes in patients in her 20s. “Doctors are too fast to medicalize the struggles of ordinary young adults. In 15 minutes, they don’t hear much about the context.”
Over her 25-year career, she has noticed that patients are being prescribed antidepressants at younger and younger ages.
“The studies that were done to ensure that SSRIs are approved by the FDA were done on adults, not on children,” she said. “But now it’s much more common for tweens and teens to prescribe medications that are prescribed than before.”
Healing agrees.
Over the past two years alone, he said he knows more than dozens of people. Many of them were young and suffered so much from PSSD that they committed suicide.
“These teenage antidepressants do more harm than good,” he said. “Young people are not usually depressed. They suffer… When you’re a teenager, you’re half crazy. Most of us do. That’s part of being a teenager And you have to learn to solve it and deal with the world.”
If you are suffering from suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255, or siadypreventionlifeline.org.
