Danielle Gansky spoke at the Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit, a May 4 public advocacy event hosted by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Institute at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC.
C-SPAN2 carried her panel, “Safety Advocates on Mental Health Care,” live. On-screen graphics identified her as a Mental Health and Drug Safety Advocate. The summit was not a congressional hearing. It was a roundtable where patient advocates shared personal stories about psychiatric medication, SSRI withdrawal, and overprescribing.
She was first prescribed Prozac at 7 after stimulants for ADHD made her irritable and moody. By her late 20s she had cycled through 14 different psychiatric medications. This is what she wrote about her experience:
I am still trapped on the same SSRI I was prescribed at 7 years old because every attempt to come off has resulted in severe, debilitating withdrawal. At 23 years old, I decided I wanted to come off antidepressants. Despite having been on them virtually my entire life, throughout my childhood and brain development, my doctor tapered me off in just 6 weeks, following the same outdated and dangerous guidance many doctors still use today.
What followed was a severe full-body neurological crisis: nonstop physical, cognitive and psychological suffering unlike anything I knew a human being could endure.
When I went back to my doctor and told him I was in withdrawal, I was told antidepressant withdrawal ‘doesn’t exist,’ that symptoms of ‘discontinuation syndrome’ are ‘mild and only last two weeks,’ and that what I was experiencing was proof I needed the drugs.
After months of torturous suffering and countless emergency room visits, I had no choice but to reinstate the antidepressant. But even after reinstating, the neurological damage from the rapid, doctor-directed taper did not go away.
That is why the term ‘withdrawal’ is often deeply misleading. For many people, coming off antidepressants can trigger a devastating neurological injury that persists for years.
I still do not feel normal. I am intermittently bedridden, and even as I type this, my brain feels like it is on fire.I genuinely do not remember what happiness, love, or emotional connection are supposed to feel like anymore. So much of my cognition, personality, creativity, and ability to access my mind the way I once could feels altered or gone. Some days the suffering becomes so overwhelming that I genuinely do not know how much longer I can continue living in this condition.
Today, at 30 years old, I am still on the same medication I was prescribed as a child. I desperately want to come off, but every attempt has caused severe, debilitating withdrawal that has made it physically impossible.
You can follow and learn more about Danielle Gansky on her X or TikTok account.
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