Stopping an antidepressant is a process, not a single decision. Done well, it involves timing, a gradual taper, and close attention to how your body responds along the way. Here’s what’s currently known about doing this safely.
When is it the right time to stop?
Antidepressants are generally considered for tapering once you’ve achieved full recovery and completed an adequate course of treatment — meaning continuation and maintenance therapy lasting at least 6 to 9 months, and ideally closer to a year, after your acute symptoms improved. [1]
This isn’t a decision to make alone or in isolation. It works best as a shared conversation with your physician or clinician; this conversation should weigh the benefits of stopping against the risk of your depression returning and the possibility of withdrawal symptoms along the way. [2]
Involving family or other support people, where appropriate, can help too. [2]
Pairing the taper with psychological support — such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) — has also been shown to lower the risk of relapse during and after the process. [2-3]
Slow and steady wins here
One of the clearer shifts in thinking over the past decade has been about how long tapering should take.
Older guidance suggested reducing the dose every one to two weeks over about a 4-week period, with a bit more time added for drugs that leave the body quickly. [2][4]
Newer guidance takes a notably slower approach: current recommendations call for a gradual, stepwise reduction scaled to your current dose, with some guidelines now describing tapers that unfold over months to a year plus, not weeks. [2-3]
Why the change? Short tapers — over just two to four weeks — turn out to offer little advantage over stopping abruptly, and are often poorly tolerated. [2][5]
In one study of the antidepressant paroxetine, an individualized taper lasting an average of about 38.6 weeks resulted in withdrawal symptoms in only 6.1% of patients, compared to 78.2% when the drug was stopped abruptly. [2][5]
Tapering too quickly (in under 4 weeks) may also raise the risk of relapse, possibly because the brain doesn’t have enough time to adjust.[3]
Why the shape of the taper matters, not just the speed
There’s a more technical concept behind modern tapering advice worth understanding: many antidepressants, especially SSRIs, don’t affect the brain in a straight line as the dose drops. Cutting the dose in equal steps (say, in quarters) often produces much bigger effects at the lower doses than at the higher ones. To keep the effect on the brain more even throughout the process, some experts now recommend progressively smaller dose reductions as you get lower — sometimes requiring specialized tapering strips or liquid formulations to achieve very small final doses before stopping completely. [2-3][5-6]
That said, this approach hasn’t yet been definitively proven superior to simpler, evenly-spaced reductions — the evidence is still limited. [2-3][5-6]
Not all antidepressants carry the same withdrawal risk
Medications that leave the body quickly tend to cause more noticeable withdrawal symptoms and generally need the slowest, most careful tapers: [1][7]
| Withdrawal risk | Examples |
| Very high | Phenelzine, tranylcypromine |
| High | Older tricyclic antidepressants, venlafaxine, desvenlafaxine, paroxetine |
| Moderate | Sertraline, citalopram, escitalopram, duloxetine, vortioxetine |
| Low | Fluoxetine, milnacipran |
| No or unclear risk | Agomelatine (none observed); mirtazapine, bupropion (not well established) |
[1][7]
What withdrawal symptoms actually look like
If they occur, discontinuation symptoms are usually mild and physical rather than severe. They tend to start within a few days of the last dose (often 2 to 4 days), peak somewhere between about a day and a half and two weeks, and typically resolve within about two weeks — though this can stretch to six weeks depending on the specific drug. [1][4][6-8]
The most common symptoms are dizziness and nausea. Others include flu-like feelings, trouble sleeping, tingling or “electric shock” sensations, mood changes, and a sense of being on edge. [1][4][6-8]
One important trap to be aware of: these withdrawal symptoms — especially changes in mood, sleep, or appetite — can look a lot like a return of depression itself. This can lead to restarting long-term treatment unnecessarily, when what’s actually happening is a temporary withdrawal effect. [4-5]
If symptoms do emerge and are bothersome, the typical approach is to go back to the previous dose, let things settle, and then resume the taper more slowly. [8]
After you’ve fully stopped, it’s worth keeping an eye on your mood for several months, since medication can be restarted if depressive symptoms genuinely return. [4]
A note for older adults
For older adults, a gradual reduction over at least 4 weeks is generally advised, with extra time built in for drugs like paroxetine and venlafaxine. People who are more likely to come off medication successfully tend to have mild-to-moderate depression severity before starting the taper, little or no cognitive impairment, and are 85 or younger. [4]
The bottom line
Stopping an antidepressant works best as a gradual, personalized process rather than a fixed formula — shaped by which medication you’re on, how you’ve responded to dose changes in the past, and ongoing conversation with your clinician about pacing and any symptoms that come up along the way.
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The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2021. Van Leeuwen E, van Driel ML, Horowitz MA, et al.
The Lancet. Psychiatry. 2026.Zaccoletti D, Mosconi C, Gastaldon C, et al.
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The Journal of the American Medical Association. 2017. Kok RM, Reynolds CF.
5.Tapering of SSRI Treatment to Mitigate Withdrawal Symptoms.
The Lancet. Psychiatry. 2019.Horowitz MA, Taylor D.
6.Incidence and Nature of Antidepressant Discontinuation Symptoms.
JAMA Psychiatry. 2025. Kalfas M, Tsapekos D, Butler M, et al.
7.Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
American Psychiatric Association (2022). 2022. Dilip V. Jeste, Jeffrey A. Lieberman, David Fassler, et alGuideline
8.Discontinuing Antidepressants: Pearls and Pitfalls.
Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. 2022. Zwiebel SJ, Viguera AC.