Preventing people becoming reliant on antidepressants

The Economist has an editorial ‘Most people on antidepressants don’t need them: Time to wean them off’. It helpfully focuses on the need for de-prescribing. As I said in a previous post for example, doctors have made too many people dependent on antidepressants. 

It’s not just deprescribing that’s needed. More people need to be managed without antidepressants. There may be a sense in which it’s misleading to say that most people on antidepressants don’t need them. It may be underestimating how much they have become habituated to taking them. People who want to stop antidepressants do need help but it is also important to prevent so many people becoming reliant on them.