Long-Term Antidepressant Therapy — To Stop or Not?

Patients who are doing reasonably well on antidepressant medication often inquire about stopping drug treatment. Although clinical trials have shown a higher rate of relapse among patients who stop their antidepressants compared with those who continue, most participants in those trials had been on maintenance treatment for relatively short periods.

For this new U.K. trial, researchers enrolled 478 patients (mean age, 54) who were being treated for depression with sertraline, fluoxetine, citalopram, or mirtazapine in primary care practices and who felt well enough to consider stopping their medication. Most patients had longstanding depression (mean age at onset, 33) with multiple recurrences, and most had been on continuous drug therapy for…