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Stutters, sex problems and terrifying memory lapses: Doctors warn how antidepressants can change 'brain chemistry'... and the problems really start when you try to quit them

At the start of the year Julie Hiener developed a dramatic stutter. She struggles to get the words out as she tells me: 'I just woke up one day and I couldn't speak properly.'

At the start of the year Julie Hiener developed a dramatic stutter. She struggles to get the words out as she tells me: 'I just woke up one day and I couldn't speak properly.'

This is one of many serious neurological and physical symptoms the 60-year-old mother of two has suffered since coming off antidepressants. She continues, tearfully: 'Sometimes I can't get up or even face having a shower. I've had to give up my job as a carer. I'm a shadow of my former self.'

Julie, from Dorset, contacted me through antidepressantrisks.org, a non-profit organisation I set up with experts after I suffered an adverse reaction to an antidepressant 12 years ago.

Since then I've campaigned for awareness that while these pills can be helpful for some, for others they can have dangerous, debilitating side-effects – while you're on them, but also when coming off them.

Julie is one of a growing number of people who tell me they started out well on antidepressants, but now have had their life destroyed by withdrawal symptoms months or years after they have come off them.

This is a problem faced by millions of Britons who, experts say, are not being sufficiently advised by their GPs that it can be dangerous to stop or switch antidepressants abruptly.

Under new guidelines from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP), the advice when stopping antidepressants is 'a gradual taper' – this is to reduce the risk of withdrawal symptoms that can make patients unwell (and may be seen as a sign of the illness returning, so their doses are actually increased).

Yet patients can find tapering difficult because reducing the dose by tiny amounts involves taking antidepressants in liquid form or using special tapering strips (a roll of pouches containing consecutively slightly lower doses). It is extremely difficult to get either in the UK.

Julie was first prescribed antidepressants, aged 19, after being hospitalised for severe mental distress. She was put on 30 mg of the antidepressant citalopram, a type of SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor).

These drugs are widely prescribed and are thought to act on serotonin, a chemical messenger that carries signals between nerve cells in the brain and regulates mood.

'The citalopram stabilised me and I carried on life as normal,' says Julie. 'I married my husband Mark at 23 and had two kids. I was always very driven so I juggled part-time jobs with studying accountancy and being a mum.'

As the kids got older, Julie became a carer – in 2019 setting up her own agency (Mark works as a warehouse assistant).

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