One of the widely-reported side effects of SSRIs is 'blunting', where patients report feeling emotionally dull and no longer finding things as pleasurable as they used to. Between 40-60% of patients taking SSRIs are believed to experience this side effect.
As it is with any medication, antidepressants can have side effects, including the possibility of what is termed “emotional blunting.” According to studies, nearly half of people taking antidepressants at some point experience emotional blunting from antidepressants.
In most cases, feelings of numbness go away when you stop taking the antidepressant that is causing you to feel this way. If you feel emotionally numb, it's important to tell your doctor. Don't stop taking your antidepressant without talking to your doctor first.
Patients on SSRI antidepressants feel numb because the drug reduces reinforcement sensitivity, that is, our sensitivity to positive feedback, which you can also call rewards or pleasure.
Emotional blunting is also considered a potential side effect of antidepressants, in particular SSRI antidepressants, and has been reported in multiple case reports and clinical studies.
Emotional blunting can be temporary, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours at a time. It can also occur over the long term, from months to years. It all depends on the underlying cause. Experiencing emotional blunting may affect your relationships and how you feel about yourself and the world.
One of the widely-reported side effects of SSRIs is 'blunting', where patients report feeling emotionally dull and no longer finding things as pleasurable as they used to. Between 40-60% of patients taking SSRIs are believed to experience this side effect.
When first starting antidepressants, you may not feel like yourself. Though your depression symptoms might have improved, feelings of extreme sadness can sometimes be replaced by an emotional numbness in which you are neither able to cry nor enjoy a real belly laugh. If you feel this way, you are definitely not alone.
Widely used antidepressants cause “emotional blunting”, according to research that offers new insights into how the drugs may work and their possible side-effects.
The researchers believe that the reduced reinforcement sensitivity caused by escitalopram may reflect the emotional blunting effect frequently reported by people taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), but further work is necessary to understand the underlying mechanism.
Your Mood or Energy Improve Too Much
If you're taking antidepressant medication and you either feel unusually elated, or you become very terse with your loved ones, feel noticeably more irritable, or have an uncharacteristic bout of rage, then it's likely that your antidepressant dose is too high.
Anxiety numbness can last a few moments to minutes if it is caused by anxiety and an active stress response, hypo or hyperventilation, or other temporary cause. Or it could persist for days or months if it is caused by hyperstimulation (chronic stress), medication, sleep deprivation, and other long-term cause.
Emotional numbing is a common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Particularly Complex PTSD, (C-PTSD) when it can also be accompanied by memory suppression.
Emotional detachment can also be "emotional numbing", "emotional blunting", i.e., dissociation, depersonalization or in its chronic form depersonalization disorder.
An amotivational, or apathy, syndrome has been reported in a number of patients receiving SSRI treatment over the last decade. This adverse effect has been noted to be dose-dependent and reversible, but is often unrecognized.
These symptoms of brain fog may be short-term or ongoing as you take these medications. While antidepressants are generally intended to help with brain fog, some can cause brain fog as a side effect, depending on the medication and your unique response to it.
It's not an uncommon experience and it's called anhedonia. Simply put, anhedonia is when you lose interest in the social activities and physical sensations that you once enjoyed. It's a symptom of many mental health conditions, including depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Because SSRIs cause more serotonin to remain in circulation in the brain, the individual experiences less depressive symptoms. In fact, many people report feeling completely back to normal when taking these medications.
Depersonalization can also be an adverse effect of medication, including anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications. [7] If you believe your depersonalization is caused by an adverse effect of medication, you should discuss this with your doctor and pharmacist.
It is well known that harms caused by SSRIs can be long-lasting [18] and there are indications that they can even be permanent, e.g. for sexual disturbances [39, 40]. Withdrawal symptoms are also drug harms, and they can also persist for a long time [18].
The fact that in the present study an inability to cry was associated with a range of SSRIs with differing secondary effects suggests that it is the primary action on increasing synaptic availability of serotonin which mediates the effect.