Canadian Mental Health Association

[GIXXER]

I contacted the Canadian Mental Health Association here in Canada to see if they're aware of PSSD, and what they recommend.

They mention this website for support. I cant stress enough that we can not lose this website. Its slowly growing (300 members) but it will become the website all PSSD suffers will come to in the future.

Thank You Sonny and Ghost Im greatly appreciative for this.

Here is CMHA response,


Thank you for contacting us here at the Canadian Mental Health Association, BC Division. I hope that we can help you find what you’re looking for.

I can’t imagine how upsetting it must be to have suffered from PSSD for so long, even after trying to get help from your doctor. It’s a shame that in the field of psychiatry in general that there is not more awareness and research looking into the long-term effects of antidepressants after discontinuation, especially with sexual side effects. Perhaps in part due to the reluctance of patients to open up about it, is an understudied topic in psychiatry. I'm glad you are opening up about your experience, because it takes courage, and the more people who speak out about this issue, the more awareness and openness there will be - I have a feeling many people suffer in silence.

I’m not an expert in PSSD, so I can’t offer actual advice in that regards, but here are a couple suggestions for resources in BC that may be helpful.

Since your doctor has not been able to help you, I’m wondering if you can get a referral to see a psychiatrist? Doctors just don’t have the expertise when it comes to psycho-pharmaceuticals that are likely required to get to the bottom of your issue. There is a specialized centre you could try called the BC Centre for Sexual Medicine. They are tertiary so they prefer psychiatrists refer there, but it is possible for a GP to. Also, your GP would be the one to refer you to a psychiatrist in the first place, so you would probably need to go that route first. They serve the entire province and you can find out more about them here: http://psychiatry.vch.ca/bccs.htm

It might also be that even though you have been free of antidepressants for quite some time, the living hell of PSSD you described might be causing you psychological stress that further exacerbates the PSSD. That is, although your condition might be entirely due to the SSRIs, what originally was a neurobiological problem could become psychological as well, and it might be an idea to look for a therapist who specializes in sexual issues. You may want to read this article we have on how to find a good sex counselor: http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/visions/cou ... well-being

Also, I’m not sure if you have already explored this, but there is a fairly large and active forum of other sufferers of PSSD here: http://www.pssdforum.com/index.php
It can be helpful to connect with others who are in a similar situation, especially in a society that is constantly glamorizing sex.

Lastly, it might be worth filing your experience with Health Canada as a medication adverse reaction is your GP supports that:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/ad ... on-eng.php

I want to commend you again for speaking up about your adverse reaction to antidepressant use, since it's not an easy topic to bring up, and I can imagine how life-impacting it must be. It might take time to find the right treatment, but I do hope you try some of the suggestions I have listed, and not give up hope, as there must be others like you who have struggled with it and found a solution.

Kirsten


_________
CMHA BC
Canadian Mental Health Association, BC Division
905-1130 West Pender Street, Vancouver BC, Canada V6E 4A4
Tel: 1-800-555-8222 (n BC) or 604-688-3234
Email: help@cmha.bc.ca
http://www.cmha.bc.ca

[sjv16477]

Very good work! Defenitively in the right direction. Have you linked the published studies about pssd? You can ask to write an official communicate to pratictioners in order to make them aware about pssd, probably they has also an official magazine so they can publish an article on it. Or they can send an official request to the Pharmacovigilance Agency of Canada to obtain the official recognition of the syndrome and add it on the leaflet of each SSRIs.

[GIXXER]

I will do that. which published studies are there?

[sjv16477]

Look here http://www.pssdforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=968

[Angrydude00]

This post is very interesting to me for 2 reasons. For one, that's incredible that this person from The Canadian Mental Health Association acknowledges PSSD and our forum. Second, I was unaware that there are only around 300 members here. I was under the impression that people sign up all the time and just lurk. Isn't there like 4,000 people on the Yahoo! group? This is a much better source of information than that one.
Also, if there are only 300 member, that makes me wonder if PSSD is even more rare than I thought.

[Bigmum]

Tardive Dyskinesia is listed as a "rare disease" by the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This means that Tardive Dyskinesia, or a subtype of Tardive Dyskinesia, affects less than 200,000 people in the US population.
How many of them you can find on forums....
200, 300, 1000? mayby 50...
60 percent people have been treated with antidepressants...at least for 2 years, 20 persent for more then 10 years....so they dont even know....
Only in my country i found 70 cases on diffrent forums complaining about it...
Not everyone is writting about it....
Consider age people treated with AD.....

[raven100]

Angrydude I do think PSSD in particular is very rare unfortunately, but long term withdrawals from SSRIs in general are quite common

[fema4psyciatrists]

count out all the people that stay on 'medication'. count out most of the people that are female (which is the biggest majority of AD users, post-menopausal being highest). count out lots of people that are older than a mere 28. count out all the people that havent been on it for 10 or so years yet.

there are a lot of factors to count out, especially if you consider that we are a post-medication thing. I was in a whole room of men served up on psych drugs all with secret medication sexual dysfunction. I dont think they even told their docs.