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Thank you - same here. I hate how “trendy” it’s become to hate on SSRIs. Are they a silver bullet? no. Are they overprescribed? Maybe. But they’re one of the few useful treatments for debilitating depression and anxiety that we currently have.



The other interesting thing about SSRIs is that because

1. SSRIs are relatively safe

2. The actual mechanisms of action of SSRIs are not fully understood

3. SSRIs have been prescribed so widely in the last few decades

SSRIs are extremely well studied in scientific literature. To be clear when I say well studied I mean that the corpus of literature is broad, not that the corpus is comprehensive to the point that it can be claimed a solved problem. If you would like lots of placebo blind controlled trials and a bunch of different ways of looking at the problem you will find a welcome home in SSRI's.

Note also that I'm not saying SSRI's are a great solution to every problem simply because they are well studied. They just have a lot of data points for people to use to make informed decisions. Which is always a good thing - and it's a luxury you rarely get in pharmacology.




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