Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction & other enduring sexual dysfunctions
David Healy
Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences2019
Summary (paraphrased)
Healy traces the history of enduring sexual dysfunction after antidepressants from 1991 regulator reports through the first formal PSSD descriptions in 2006, arguing the syndrome has major clinical, research, and regulatory implications that psychiatry has been slow to absorb. He discusses how trial design and reporting conventions kept sexual effects invisible, why persistent dysfunction challenges the assumption that drug effects end at discontinuation, and what the phenomenon implies for informed consent. The paper frames PSSD alongside other tardive drug-induced syndromes as a neglected area of pharmacoepidemiology.
Why it’s in the corpus
Concise historical/epidemiological framing of PSSD by the field's central researcher, in a Cambridge journal. Useful as the corpus's "why this matters" narrative citation.
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- Peer-reviewed paperVenue unverified
Persistence of Sexual Dysfunction Side Effects after Discontinuation of Antidepressant Medications: Emerging Evidence
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Bahrick argues that the clinical convention — that SSRI/SNRI sexual side effects resolve on discontinuation — rests on an untested assumption rather than evidence. Reviewing post-marketing prevalence data and emerging case reports, she notes that real-world…
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Post-Finasteride Syndrome And Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction: Two Clinical Conditions Apparently Distant, But Very Close
Giatti, Silvia; Diviccaro, Silvia; Cioffi, Lucia; Melcangi, Roberto Cosimo · Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology · 72
Argues PFS and PSSD share overlapping clinical features (sexual dysfunction, psychological complaints, sleep disorders) and likely common mechanisms involving neuroactive steroids, serotonin/dopamine/catecholamine signaling and gut microbiota, possibly…
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Post-finasteride syndrome and post-SSRI sexual dysfunction: two sides of the same coin?
Giatti, Silvia; Diviccaro, Silvia; Panzica, Giancarlo; Melcangi, Roberto Cosimo · Endocrine · 61(2):180-193
A review by the Milan group of post-SSRI sexual dysfunction and post-finasteride syndrome, which share symptoms that persist after the drug is stopped: a felt disconnection between brain and penis, loss of libido and sex drive, difficulty with erection and…
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