Does long-term SSRI use cause any permanent changes in personality? Are there any quantitative/qualitative studies looking at this?

Question

Curious about counseling patient's on the long-term risk/benefit analysis of SSRI use? Is there any EBM on what personality changes one should expect after X period of SSRI use? Does this change depend on the underlying psychiatric diagnosis?

Answer 1

Hello there, I placed a very quick summary of a peer-reviewed, evidence-based article below. I will include the journal name, DOI, and other citation information at the end. I hope this helps:

Popovic, Vieta, Fornaro, & Perugi (2015) conducted a quantitative, comparison study investigating the long-term effects SSRI can have on patient’s diagnosed with either Major Depression Disorder (MDD) or Anxiety Disorder (AD). The sample size consisted of 67 patients who have been using SSRI to treat either MDD or AD for over six months. Signs and symptoms patients specifically reported that is consistent with personality changes include apathy, irritability, inattentiveness, forgetfulness, mental slowing, and word-finding difficulty (Popovic, Vieta, Fornaro, & Perugi, 2015).

Journal Name: Journal of Affective Disorders

Article: Cognitive tolerablity following successful long term treatment of major depression and anxiety disorders with SSRI anit-depressants

Year: 2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2014.11.008