An excellent international review of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome has recently been published in the the journal Addictive Behaviours. The authors conclude that “guidelines on antidepressant withdrawal [should] be urgently updated as they are clearly at variance with the evidence on the incidence, severity and duration of antidepressant withdrawal, and are probably leading to the widespread misdiagnosing of withdrawal, the consequent lengthening of antidepressant use, much unnecessary antidepressant prescribing and higher rates of antidepressant prescriptions overall […] We also recommend that prescribers fully inform patients about the possibility of withdrawal effects.”
This is not a new issue – some 20 years ago the subject was reviewed in the Australian Prescriber and the features compared to other clinical syndromes. Interested readers can view the tabular comparison here