Epoch Times - Potential Irreversible Damage to Sexual Health Linked to SSRI Antidepressants | Dr. Irwin Goldstein
Aired: 2025-11-01
Duration: 02:57


=== Sexual Health Concerns with SSRIs (02:15) ===

[00:00:00]  SSRIs, selectoserotonin reuptake inhibitors, are one of the most widely prescribed medications in the United States.
[00:00:12]  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.
[00:00:31]  The problem is they are recognized to raise serotonin, that's their mechanism, but serotonin is an inhibitor of sexual function.
[00:00:43]  So while using the medication, it's widely appreciated that individuals will suffer sexual health concerns.
[00:00:53]  But what is not appreciated is when they stop the medicine, the usual teaching is that everyone returns to their pre-medication sexual function.
[00:01:07]  And that's not what we're seeing in our sexual health clinic here.
[00:01:12]  So the name of the condition is post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, or PSSD.
[00:01:21]  And it's an awful condition.
[00:01:24]  It persists, causes frustration, embarrassment, humiliation.
[00:01:32]  It causes erectile dysfunction in young men, libido problems, genital sensation changes, orgasmic dysfunction.
[00:01:42]  It's kind of an awful thing, and it doesn't go away.
[00:01:47]  And it is used in a lot of minors who aren't part of the consent process since these medications.
[00:01:58]  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 (00:56) ===

[00:02:09]  And three out of four patients are between the ages of 10 and 25 in this study.
[00:02:15]  That's kind of, it's just, I don't know, it's amazing.
[00:02:20]  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.
[00:02:34]  Well, they never experience normal sexual function.
[00:02:37]  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.
[00:02:52]  I mean, it's not like they're taking poison.
[00:02:55]  It's a medicine.