~50% response rate for people with major depressive disorder isn't "barely working" -- for millions of people, SSRIs significantly improve their quality of life. Unfortunately, there is no "one size fits all" solution and often those of us with MDD have to try different medications, in conjunction with a (good) therapist before we find what works best.

Personally, I've run the gamut on SSRIs and they never suppressed all emotion.

Maybe the effect is different when prescribed for something other than depression, but I did not find my SSRI to suppress my emotions. It simply helps me curb rumination and negative thought spirals. Helps to feel "lighter" and simultaneously more grounded. If anything, that allows me to feel _more_ positive emotion rather than suppressing it.

Cool, glad you had a positive experience. My experience was the opposite: emotionally numb to the point where awfully bad things happened in my presence and I barely shrugged.

Being unable to feel joy or pain, being unable to cry when a loved on passed on; these were the hallmarks of my time on SSRIs. Never again will I subject myself to these drugs.

It took me twice as long to get off them as I was on them. Two years of prescribed meds, 4 years to get off them. Six years of my life spent as a literal zombie person.

We don’t know why they work or don’t. Our experiences are just anecdata.

> Our experiences are just anecdata.

Just?

Anecdotes matter

Worked great for me. Placebo might have worked too, but doctors don't prescribe those!

This is blatantly false. I've been on a few. Some didn't help, some made me worse. The one I'm on now is extremely helpful, and saved me.

None of them had any suppressant effects on my emotions at all.

I was specifically thinking of this paper:

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

As well as the experience of many people close to me that used SSRIs.