You think the vast majority of people do not experience side effects from anti-depressants? Wild.
> The proportion of patients reporting adverse events ranged from 16% to 98% (median 80%) under SSRI treatment and from 17% to 94% (median 70%) under placebo [1]
So the answer IMO depends on whether we can attribute adverse effects to treatment, which is difficult to disentangle from adverse effects of disease
I’m open to being shown more certainty if available from the literature but meta-analyses are high-strength evidence
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...
I've tried a variety and I can't say whether I've experienced side effects. That's just an anecdote but that's the thing with this discussion, that's all you will get. If people don't suffer side effects, they're not likley to get on HN and post about them, etc.
The bigger issue is the person dealing with these issues is taking them because they are not well-off. If you deal with reduced desire, for example, is that a side effect of the medication or is that a side effect of being depressed.
I think your "wild" is a little flippant or telling because it just points back to anecdotes.
They are also anecdotal, hundreds, thousands of people suffering side effects. Given dozen of millions people in the U.S alone are prescribed those things daily, that a drop in the ocean. But not everyone post on Reddit either
I never found a sub reddit talking about the side effects of mineral water, how eating apples regularily lowered their libidos, on that sleeping on a mattress made them senile.
At some point common sense primes over what funded science wants people to believe.
The side effects exist since some doctors do warn about them, one may also find them in the counter indications mentioning those things. It isn't unfounded.
What's taboo today is to criticize SSRIs over prescriptions. Odd, given that over 25% of the U.S population are taking them, or some other form of legal psycho active substance, just to be able to "function".