Regulate antidepressant withdrawal risks

Antidepressant discontinuation can produce common, sometimes prolonged and severe withdrawal syndromes that are only now being accepted by professional bodies. Regulators and health systems should treat withdrawal risk as a formal safety endpoint — requiring clearer patient warnings, standardized tapering guidance, post‑discontinuation monitoring and adverse‑event reporting. — If adopted, this would reshape prescribing, informed consent, drug labelling and regulatory review for a widely used class of medicines, affecting millions of patients and clinicians.