All cases are possible with S{S|N}RIs (I am a doctor but I know a little regexp). Patients that took them for two months and never needed again and others that cannot stop them after 20y. The start, the stop and every restart of the drug needs an indication so it should be approached with the same care as any medical decision. It's not right to call it withdrawal. These drugs are not addictive like benzos or alcohol…
The sexual side effects can be much much worse, and far more permanent than delayed orgasm or low libido - https://www.pssdnetwork.org It's also not difficult to spot - the complete removal of libido, sometimes permanently for life, with these drugs has been seen in animal models, and also is not present in other classes of ADs. A lifetime of chemical castration effectively. Clinicians really have been misinformed ab…
I have seen and treated a large number of people with SSRIs, and the majority are incredibly thankful. I spoke to a patient yesterday who told me his Sertraline saved his life following a suicide attempt a few months ago. I saw a patient last year who fantasized constantly about murdering his colleagues at work. Fluoxetine cured him completely and he was incredibly grateful to not be tortured by those thoughts anymore. Some have had sexual side effects, but in my experience switching SSRIs often cures these. They aren't perfect drugs, but on balance they help a lot of people.
I do not think engaging with the above sort of network is a good idea, I suspect a large amount of these people suffer from psycho-social causes of libido/orgasm loss and being part of an echo chamber telling you that change is permanent will only reinforce that idea if indeed it is a psychosocial change.
I practice in the UK so things may be different here. I've never heard of a patient with persisting sexual symptoms following an SSRI switch. Certainly hear about a lot more psychosomatic conditions in the US than we seem to see here. I think a lot of this is downstream from the US fee-paying healthcare model where the implication is that doctors want to make money.
As a side note, and I find myself saying this a lot on HN, but most of you are not doctors. There are a huge amount of unknown unknowns in medical practice that the layperson is unaware of. I wouldn't even think about commenting on any technical subject with the amount of confidence most commenters here give with single-digit sample sizes, or using self-reinforcing internet forums as evidence. Frankly what we say in the consultation room and what patients walk away with is often different. All doctors know SSRI's have side effects and in my experience all counsel on these. There's probably something for us to improve there with communication, but after you explain side effects and give a leaflet explaining those again, and the patient still claims you didn't tell them about a side effect, I feel like there's not much more we can do.
Also, NewScientist is a poorly written pop-sci publication. It has constant inaccuracies and misinterpretations of the evidence. I cancelled my sub years ago when they were bought by the Daily Mail.
There is some utter pseudoscience in this thread and some completely misunderstandings of how medical practice works. The body is infinitely complex on a biochemical level and we have a very limited understanding of the interplay between all systems. Just because the serotonin theory has been disproven by one systematic review does not mean SSRIs are a bad treatment or do not work, it just means we do not fully understand their mechanism of action. These are not the same thing.
I suspect some SWE's or similar in this thread are used to having the complete understanding of a system and the levers involved, this is simply not the case for the human body.