Interventions to help patients withdraw from depression drugs: A systematic review

Depression drugs can be difficult to come off due to withdrawal symptoms. Gradual tapering with tapering support is needed to help patients withdraw safely.

To review the withdrawal success rates, using any intervention, and the effects on relapse/recurrence rates, symptom severity, quality of life, and withdrawal symptoms.

Systematic review based on PubMed and Embase searches (last search 4 October 2022) of randomised trials with one or more treatment arms aimed at helping patients withdraw from a depression drug, regardless of indication for treatment. We calculated the mean and median success rates and the risk difference of depressive relapse when discontinuing or continuing depression drugs.

We included 13 studies (2085 participants). Three compared two withdrawal interventions and ten compared drug discontinuation vs. continuation. The success rates varied hugely between the trials (9% to 80%), with a weighted mean of 47% (95% confidence interval 38% to 57%) and a median of 50% (interquartile range 29% to 65%). A meta-regression showed that the length of taper was highly predictive for the risk of relapse (P = 0.00001). All the studies we reviewed confounded withdrawal symptoms with relapse; did not use hyperbolic tapering; withdrew the depression drug too fast; and stopped it entirely when receptor occupancy was still high.

The true proportion of patients on depression drugs who can stop safely without relapse is likely considerably higher than the 50% we found.