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ARIELLA SHARF WAS first prescribed antidepressants when she was a college student more than a decade ago. When she decided to stop taking them last year, Sharf says she wasn’t sure how to do it safely. She was disappointed when her longtime psychiatrist didn’t help her find a new doctor after she moved across the country, and she thought her primary care physician wasn’t equipped for the task. Sharf decided instead to try Outro Health, a telehealth startup that CEO and cofounder Brandon Goode describes as “Uber for getting off antidepressants.”
Outro officially launched in the US last month and is currently available in seven states, including California and New York. The startup is betting that many of the growing number of Americans taking antidepressants will eventually want help coming off them. Over 11 percent of US adults took medication for depression in 2023, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey, which found women were more than twice as likely as men to use the drugs.
About one in six people who stop taking antidepressants experience side effects like nausea and dizziness, especially if they do so abruptly, according to one study. Other research has found the prevalence of adverse withdrawal symptoms may be much higher, particularly among patients who have been on them for long periods.
