| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Sexual Health Concerns with SSRIs
00:02:15
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| SSRIs, selectoserotonin reuptake inhibitors, are one of the most widely prescribed medications in the United States. | |
| They decrease the suicide rate of people with major depressive disorder and other mood issues and have been found to be really life-changing by psychiatrists and individuals with mood disorders. | |
| The problem is they are recognized to raise serotonin, that's their mechanism, but serotonin is an inhibitor of sexual function. | |
| So while using the medication, it's widely appreciated that individuals will suffer sexual health concerns. | |
| But what is not appreciated is when they stop the medicine, the usual teaching is that everyone returns to their pre-medication sexual function. | |
| And that's not what we're seeing in our sexual health clinic here. | |
| So the name of the condition is post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, or PSSD. | |
| And it's an awful condition. | |
| It persists, causes frustration, embarrassment, humiliation. | |
| It causes erectile dysfunction in young men, libido problems, genital sensation changes, orgasmic dysfunction. | |
| It's kind of an awful thing, and it doesn't go away. | |
| And it is used in a lot of minors who aren't part of the consent process since these medications. | |
| You know, there's a recent study that looked at the date of the patient's initial prescription of the SSRI medication. | |
|
Never Normal Sexual Experience
00:00:56
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|
| And three out of four patients are between the ages of 10 and 25 in this study. | |
| That's kind of, it's just, I don't know, it's amazing. | |
| Well, and of course it's incredibly important because even if some of these patients might actually even be pre-pubescent and so forth, like this is huge ramifications. | |
| Well, they never experience normal sexual function. | |
| These individuals in my clinic who have been given the medicines are youngest as age 11, I mean, they'll never experience what one would otherwise consider a normal sexual life for using the medication. | |
| I mean, it's not like they're taking poison. | |
| It's a medicine. | |