this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
13 points (81.0% liked)

Mental Health

4263 readers
195 users here now

Welcome!

This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.

Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

1-Posts promoting paid products and services of any kind are not allowed here.

2-All posts and comments must be helpful and supportive. Do not put vulnerable people at risk.

3-Do not DM or ask to speak privately to any of our members unless they specifically request it.

If a person from this community disturbs you in a comment, please report the comment. If you receive a DM you did not request, send a screenshot of the DM in a message to a moderator. This is a bannable offense.

4-Suicide, Self-Harm, Death-- Extended discussions are STRONGLY DISCOURAGED here. First, mods and community members are caring people, but not experts in crisis situations. Second, we want to avoid Lemmy becoming like many commercial social media platforms, where comments can snowball into counterproductive talk.

If you or someone you know needs more help than can be found here, please refer to the pinned resources.

If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.

Partner Communities

- Therapy

Neurodegenerative Disease Support

ADHD

Autism

Fibromyalgia

TMJ

Chronic Pain

Bipolar Disorder

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Friends and Family of People with Addiction

To partner with our community and be included here, you are free to message the current moderators or comment on our pinned post.

Community Moderation

Some moderators are mental health professionals and some are not. All are carefully selected by the moderation team and will be actively monitoring posts and comments. If you are interested in joining the team, you can send a message to ZenGrammy for more information.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
13
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Psychonometry to c/mentalhealth
 

Mild NSFW warning: this post mentions sexual side effects of medication.

SSRIs are the most common type of antidepressant (examples are Prozac/fluoxetine, Zoloft/sertraline, Paxil/paroxetine).

If you have experience with them, do you think they're a good idea?

I came across a paper about side effects which I haven't heard discussed before. Many people know that SSRIs have sexual effects, but apparently they also affect fertility.

This paper describes SSRIs as "gonadotoxic", leading to effects like "decreased sperm concentration and motility, increased [DNA] fragmentation, and decreased reproductive organ weights".

The paper does say "this effect does seem to be reversible", so if you stop SSRIs, your sex organs should apparently go back to normal. But still, some people are on SSRIs for long periods of time, right?

I would be interested to hear others' thoughts, if you have any.

Edit: Thanks for the replies to this post, they're interesting.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] shneancy 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

though it only coincidentally related SSRIs fucked me up in a different way (which still affected my libido tbf). i didn't even get to a month of treatment before i decided to quit - they were supposed to help with my anxiety, but instead of helping they made it significantly worse, to the point where i felt as if i was spending my time edging a panic attack at all times of the day. At first i thought i was just getting worse normally, but then i noticed i felt better in the evenings (i was taking them in the mornings). i just couldn't keep going it was awful

there's plenty of people for whom SSRIs are life changers, but sadly i'm not in that group

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Mine worked out well but was much worse than I expected. The doctor said I might feel “slightly more” anxiety as normal, which is the understatement of the century.

My first two and a half weeks were absolute hell like that, plus lots of digestive issues. Week 3 that faded but I had some depression, fuzzy thinking, and suicidal thoughts (more impulses). At this point I was no longer actively feeling anxious so I decided to continue. Week 4/5 I felt I had a lot more energy and wasn’t getting anxiety from my usual triggers.

I know they don’t work for everyone, but I’m at week 6 and it feels life changing to me. I feel much sharper, more focused, and happier than I have in 15 years or more.

Hopefully you find a solution that works for you. There’s no substitute for trying something and knowing it’s not working for you, so I don’t mean to diminish your experience.

I’d read a lot of negative things online about SSRIs and it was quite discouraging for me. People are very vocal about disliking them. I’m trying to toss out my own experience so it hopefully encourages people to try meds.

So far I don’t have weight gain, I’m within my normal range for the last 7 years, weight gain was a big fear I had.

[–] shneancy 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i'm glad it worked out for you! :)

for me it was a gradual climb of worsening anxiety until those near panic attacks kicked in with no signs of improvement

soon ish i'll be trying adhd meds since i suspect my anxiety is caused by rejection sensitivity dysphoria and feeling of overall inadequacy and uselessness. And on them i'll be hopefully able to do things and slowly prove to myself that i'm not useless

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I didn’t realize how much depression was affecting me, so probably very different underlying issues to you.

[–] HootinNHollerin 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

If you are bipolar and unmedicated for it, they will make it worse by increasing instability

[–] shneancy 2 points 1 month ago

nah it was just general light anxiety, and strong situational anxiety. both stemming semi-directly from adhd