In my clinic, we see people with PMDD staying on SSRIs for years, especially if the medication is working well to control PMDD symptoms and not causing side effects. To your doctor’s point, most studies of SSRI treatment for PMDD only followed participants for a few months, so we simply do not have data on what the long-term effects of SSRI use in PMDD are.

The closest comparison we have is major depressive disorder (MDD), another condition that is treated with SSRIs. Many people with MDD take SSRIs for years.

In data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 68% of people using antidepressant medications such as SSRIs had been taking the antidepressant for two years or more, and 27.2% of women had been taking antidepressant medication for ten years or more.

Updated May 2023

Liisa Hantsoo, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist & Assistant Professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine