British Psychiatrists Distort Antidepressant Withdrawal Dangers…to Big Pharma’s Profit Advantage

     There is no clinical evidence that antidepressants are any better than a placebo for improving the lives of most of the millions of Americans who take them. There is also no physical evidence that there is any such thing as a chemical imbalance causing depression which would be “balanced” by the ingestion of pharmaceutical antidepressants.

     Those two facts are a threat to the Big Pharma drug conglomerate that is taking in $80 billion per year from antidepressant sales alone.

     Another threat is the 2019 report by UK doctors James Davies and John Read that showed that 56 percent of those taking antidepressants experience withdrawal effects when trying to stop taking them, and 46 percent of those experience “severe” effects.

     That fact makes it tough to deliver a convincing argument if one is delivering an informed consent form to someone who’s to be prescribed antidepressants. Those severe withdrawal symptoms aren’t going to attract many volunteers to take an antidepressant.

     Actually, that 2019 evidence did alert the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) to give more accurate information about antidepressant withdrawal side effects and how best to slowly taper down one’s withdrawal from them.

     Since then Big Pharma has ramped up its own campaign to divert attention from those dangerous side effects of antidepressant withdrawal. This July, 2025 the British Science Media Center, for instance — which is supported by donations from drug companies and from the British Pharmaceutical Industry — publicized a particularly egregious example of the distortions Big Pharma is willing to render to keep hidden the truth about antidepressant withdrawal.

     The “Incidence and Nature of Antidepressant Discontinuation Symptoms,” written by prominent figures in British psychiatry, many from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, presents a falsely optimistic picture about antidepressant withdrawal symptoms. The authors don’t even dare call them “withdrawal symptoms.” Instead, they concocted the far more abstract  “discontinuation symptoms” phrase…as if changing the label will change the truth.

     The publication’s authors received so much money from drug companies that the study lists more drug company payments to authors than it does references to scientific papers. The study falsely claims that withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants are relatively “minor.”

     Of course, it was done on subjects who had been taking antidepressants for only 8-12 weeks. In Britain 4 million people take antidepressants for more than 2 years. Two million Brits take them for more than five years. In America 25 million take antidepressants for more than five years. A study of antidepressant withdrawal symptoms after stopping only after 8-12 weeks is not going to be helpful – let alone accurate – for the bulk of antidepressant users who have been on them for years and might want to stop taking them.

     In fact, that misleading “data” is dangerous to someone unprepared for the emotional and mental turmoil and suicidal urges that can come from going cold turkey after taking these drugs for years.

     “If you are looking at people on the drugs for eight weeks, you are not going to find withdrawal,” says James Davies, one of the of the earlier 2019 study authors.

     Is this new study then simply poor science or is it a calculated skewing of inapplicable science to mislead the public?

     The betting odds on the correct answer to that question are going to be based on the $80 billion annual sales of Big Pharma’s antidepressants…a revenue, by the way, that does not come from those who are only taking antidepressants for 8-12 weeks..