Meg Jay

Is that difficult?

Is that perilous?

It can be difficult.

And I think this is what so many young adults and teenagers and their parents may not understand is that usually when a young adult tells me they want to go on antidepressants or they've gone on antidepressants, it's to deal with a situation that is happening and that

could get better over time, should get better over time.

But they think, well, I'll do meds and this will help me get through that situation.

But when you introduce a different level of serotonin into the brain and then you try to go off meds, your brain doesn't like that because it has gotten used to this new level of serotonin.

So when you try to go off medication, your brain is going to complain about that and it's going to suddenly feel

anxious again and depressed again because you've removed what it was that was helping you feel better, at least for a time.

So what happens is that young adults will try to go off the meds.

They start to feel worse.

That is upsetting.

And then they decide, well, I guess maybe I need to go back on the meds.

So they can be harder to get off of than they are to begin.

So

How much do we know about whether or how these drugs change early development?

if they do?

Yeah, well, we don't know, and that's the problem.

So most studies on SSRIs have been done on adults whose brains are fully developed.

But even on adults, we have very little long-term data.