Encouraging people to diagnose their own depression and buy medication without a prescription – medication which has an unfavourable benefit: harm profile in most people and is difficult to stop taking – is a very bad idea.
While his concerns about patients' limited access to doctors and treatment services are valid, doing "Everything possible" to make antidepressants more easily available is not the answer.
Antidepressants are among the most prescribed treatments in the world.
Following pandemic lockdowns in March 2020, prescriptions rose 63% faster due to soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, and suicidality - so limited access to antidepressants is not the problem.
All patients being treated with antidepressants for any indication should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, and unusual changes in behavior, especially during the initial few months of a course of drug therapy, or at times of dose changes, either increases or decreases.
Many doctors still mistake the symptoms of antidepressant withdrawal for a relapse of depression, which conceals the scale of the problem.
Perlis says people should be able to access antidepressants without prescription because they're capable of "Self-diagnosing" their own depression, in the same way many over-the counter products are used to treat symptoms when people diagnose their own conditions.
I'm not a medical doctor and I don't give medical advice, but I am a medical researcher and I have spent the last decade reading the literature on antidepressants.
https://brownstone.org/articles/antidepressants-for-everyone/
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