The answer is more nuanced than you might think.
Whenever I recommend an antidepressant to a patient, I gird myself for the typical protests:“Will I no longer be ‘me?’”
SSRI and SNRSs come with a bevy of side effects — the outermost layer of the onion. My patient Carol, a musician in her early twenties, was struggling with depression amidst turmoil in her career and relationships. After taking an SSRI for several months, she noted, “I was no longer sad...but unable to feel happiness or joy.” Carol realized it was also hard to feel empathy. “I could see that something bad was happening, but I didn’t have a reaction,” she said.
Certain changes can occur when antidepressants simply do their job — the onion's middle layer. For some of my patients who take antidepressants for relief from their sadness or compulsions, they actually feel a loss when their symptoms abate. “What changes personality more than anything else is depression,” says Scott Aaronson, director of clinical research at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore.
“There’s been a misconception that our personalities don’t and can’t change over time,” says Brent Roberts, a personality research psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “People change a lot over the life course…not in any given year or any given moment, but gradually.” With interventions like SSRIs, the changes can sometimes be more rapid, he adds.
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