danielle gansky

ANTIDEPRESSANT WITHDRAWAL INJURY is a serious neurological brain injury that happens even when you stop an SSRI following “standard” doctor tapering advice. After long-term use, the brain & nervous system adapt and change but the rushed 2-4 week one-size-fits-all tapers doctors still use are dangerously fast and actively causing brain injuries on a massive scale. Right now, thousands of people are being harmed simply by doing exactly what their doctors tell them and end up with long-term neurological damage and years of disability. The system gaslights victims, denies the harm, and hides the truth. This rivals the opioid crisis. If you've been affected, you're not alone. Share your story. #antidepressantwithdrawal #pssd

For the millions of long-term antidepressant users in the US, hyperbolic tapering is currently the best strategy to reduce the risk of severe and protracted withdrawal. Linear tapers can work for short-term users, but many people who’ve been on antidepressants for >12 months find they need progressively smaller dose reductions at lower doses. Why? Antidepressants interact with serotonin transporters in a hyperbolic way, meaning tiny reductions become much more powerful near zero. Featuring ACE founder Morgan Stewart @morgan_stewar, Mark Horowitz @markhoro and Awais Aftab @awaisaftab, read more about hyperbolic tapering from WebMD below.

Young woman discusses the life-altering neurological harm she suffered after her doctor tapered her off her SSRI too quickly. “It's really like a form of chemical torture” “He tapered me off in just 6 weeks.” “The consequences of that failure was a severe, life-altering, full-body neurological crisis and a profound brain injury that stole my life and has stolen the lives of so many.” “Every sound and light and movement felt like an attack on my raw, exposed nervous system.” “Being alive just simply felt unbearable.” @daniellegansky

(1/2) Remarkable milestone: r/PSSD has surpassed 20,000 members on @Reddit, underscoring the urgent need for the medical community to recognize Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD). With little help from medical professionals, people have turned to online communities for answers.

Congratulations @Dr_Haridopolos so well deserved 🤍😇🙏🏻

What Every Parent Should Know About SSRIs: The Story of @DanielleGansky Danielle Gansky was seven years old when a teacher noticed she seemed fidgety in class. She is thirty now, still on the same antidepressant she was prescribed as a child, and may need fifteen more years to come off safely. Del Bigtree sits down with Danielle, whose story begins the way millions of others do: a school referral, a psychiatrist, an ADHD diagnosis, and a stimulant prescription. Within weeks of starting Ritalin, the happy, engaged child her parents knew was gone, replaced by agitation, rage, and mood swings that her doctors interpreted not as drug side effects but as evidence of worsening mental illness. More drugs followed. By the time she was ten, Danielle had been prescribed stimulants, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics. At one point in high school, the doses of Xanax prescribed to her were heavy enough that she could barely wake up, missing so many school days that her psychiatrist had to medically excuse her absences to avoid truancy. She was down to ninety pounds. Every concern she raised was diagnosed as a new symptom of an underlying disorder requiring a higher dose. At twenty-three, she decided she wanted to come off the medications entirely. Her doctor tapered her over six weeks, following standard clinical guidance. What followed was a full-body neurological crisis she describes as a living nightmare: her brain felt like it was on fire, every sound and light was an attack on her nervous system, akathisia produced uncontrollable shaking and a state of inner terror she can only describe as chemical torture. When her mother contacted the prescribing doctor, his written response dismissed the possibility that SSRIs could cause any of it and suggested that Danielle's symptoms were a feature of her mental illness. She was completely bedridden, in and out of emergency rooms, and gaslit at every turn. She eventually had to reinstate the antidepressant just to survive the withdrawal. She is still on it today, and even reductions of less than one percent send her system into crisis. Del also shows testimony from Lauren Friedman, twenty-three, who developed post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, a condition in which the neurological damage from SSRIs produces permanent genital numbness, loss of the ability to orgasm, and complete loss of emotional range, including the ability to feel love or pleasure in music, activities that were central to who she was before the drug. Lauren notes that the condition has been documented after a single dose, is not on the warning label in any meaningful way, and has never been adequately studied for long-term persistence. There are currently no evidence-based clinical guidelines for safe psychiatric drug tapering. Pharmaceutical manufacturers do not produce doses small enough for the gradual reductions many patients require, leaving people to count beads from capsules and cut pills with razor blades to avoid another crisis. For anyone going through this or supporting someone who is, Danielle recommends the @PSSDNetwork for information and advocacy on post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, and the Antidepressant Coalition for Education for withdrawal support and awareness. Danielle can be followed on Instagram, X, TikTok, and Facebook at Danielle Gansky. Anyone with medical knowledge or potential solutions for these injuries is encouraged to contact ICAN at info@ican.org.

NEW: @MikhailaFuller on Culture Apothecary gets candid about plastic surgery, the side effect to SSRIs NO ONE is discussing, what’s really going on with her dad @jordanbpeterson, dating and MORE

A study of over a thousand patients found that 59% of people on antidepressants experience sexual dysfunction. Doctors are prescribing these drugs to seven-year-olds. A peer-reviewed study of over 1,000 outpatients found that 59.1% of patients on antidepressants experienced sexual dysfunction when all antidepressants were considered together. Men came in at 62.4%, women at 56.9%, with women reporting higher severity. Those are the numbers attached to a class of drugs now being prescribed to children as young as seven. The European Medicines Agency took that seriously enough in 2019 that it updated the official product labeling for SSRIs and SNRIs after petitioners, researchers, and people harmed by these drugs forced their hand. The new language states that these drugs may cause symptoms of sexual dysfunction, and that there have been reports of long-lasting sexual dysfunction where the symptoms continued even after the drug was discontinued. A parent putting a seven-year-old on an SSRI may be thinking their child is not sexually active yet, so the risk feels abstract. What that framing misses is that most children put on these medications do not come off them. They carry the drug into adulthood, into relationships, and into marriage, along with a 50 to 60 percent likelihood of sexual dysfunction that the label now acknowledges may not resolve even after they stop taking it. 👇

Amazing @DanielleGansky, thank you for continuing to make people aware of the devastating harm SSRIs have been causing for decades.

🤍👏

Most SSRIs were approved by the FDA based only on short 6–12 week trials because they were originally intended for temporary use. Yet millions of Americans end up staying on them for years or even permanently. “These medications were really only ever intended for short-term use.” “The drug trials on the basis of which the FDA approved these drugs are quite short.” “Yet most of us take these medications for years.” @LauraDelano

SSRI’s are leaving children and teens permanently unable to do things as simple as flying in airplanes due to severe neurological damage. “My body starts to shake.” “My nervous system just starts malfunctioning.” “I get burning sensations throughout my whole body.” “I’m just so sensitized.” “Even little things like my mom sprayed some hairspray this morning and that just made me feel so sick.” @DanielleGansky @highwiretalk @delbigtree

We know vaccine injury,but more people need to speak out about the horrific so-called 'side effects' of widely prescribed drugs Lauren Friedman,has shared the personal damage she has suffered after taking antidepressants known as Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)

Emotions are energy. To blunt or anesthetize this energy is harmful to our health, spirit and purpose.

For decades (yes, decades) I have been screaming about SSRI meds and our kids - and adults. It is so refreshing that this topic is finally being discussed. If it weren't for @GigiBowman I never would've realized. Rest in Peace, Katie. 🙏

Thanks for having me on for this important conversation @delbigtree @HighWireTalk

I’ve been posting about Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction on TikTok and some of the videos have gotten decent attention. I’ve had at least 50 people DM me saying they’ve had PSSD for years but didn’t know what it was. PSSD is real and under reported. Not rare.

‼️The antidepressant sexual dysfunction rate is 59%. The average starting age is getting younger. And the side effects can outlast the prescription permanently. A study on antidepressant use found that 59.1% of patients experience sexual dysfunction, and the European Medicines Agency updated the official product information for SSRIs and SNRIs in 2019 to acknowledge that these symptoms have continued in some patients even after stopping the drug entirely. The damage can be permanent. This is the medication being prescribed to seven-year-olds. A parent giving an SSRI to a child that young may rationalize that sexual side effects are not relevant yet. What that parent may not understand is that most children who start on these medications never come off them. The decision made at age seven follows that child into adulthood, and a 59% rate of sexual dysfunction is not a risk they are choosing for themselves. It is a risk being chosen for them before they are old enough to have any say in the matter. When adverse event rates in vaccine trials hit 5%, alarm bells go off. When one in two patients reports sexual dysfunction from a drug being prescribed to primary school children, it barely makes the news.

Now even people on the far left are admitting what some parents have been saying for years: Maybe numbing pain isn’t the same thing as healing it.

“It’s about 17% of the population…on SSRIs.” “When they were tested and they got approval, there was an assumption that you would use them for maybe a couple of months to stabilize your life.” “Once you get on them, it is very difficult to get off.” “The withdrawal in some cases takes not weeks, not months, but years.” “We have directed [the] FDA now to put on the label protocols for withdrawal and warnings.” “I’m not telling people not to use psychiatric drugs.” RFK Jr. makes clear a few things in this clip: 1. He is not taking away anyone’s psychiatric drugs, despite how the media has portrayed him. 2. HHS is finally recognizing the seriousness of psychiatric drug withdrawal and the need for better informed consent around these drugs. @adamcarolla

“I never got to experience the full range of emotions and feelings of being human … ” “Anytime I tried to go off [SSRIs], it would throw me into such a severe panic.” “Now I'm dealing with the realization that I've missed a lot of life.” Nobody told Cameron LaBar that the side effects of SSRIs would completely change his life. Take 2 minutes to hear his story: “When you talk to a doctor about that, a very common response is: that is a part of your underlying condition, you probably need the medication.” “It wasn't until I stumbled across a video from Mark [Horowitz] that suggested that these [symptoms aren’t] part of who I am.” “It took me 20 years to find that out.” “I've been tapering for about 3 years now.” “I'm down to about 7.5 milligrams of Lexapro.” “It's probably gonna take me another 3 to 5 years to get the rest of the way [off] given how these drugs work.” “But imagine the fury, the rage of [realizing] I could have figured this out a lot sooner.” “I could have functioned as a human being all along.” “I could have had friendships.”

“I could have not been numb.” “These are the things that I'm now struggling with.” “A lot of my experience, year after year, has been discounted and affected by these drugs.” If you had a similar experience to Cameron with psychiatric drugs, you are not alone. We want to hear your story. Share your experience in a reply below, or share a video and tag us @_innercompass. @MAHA_Institute