The interview study that established emotional blunting on SSRIs as a real, describable side effect
Interviews and patient-website posts. People described significant emotional symptoms they attributed to their SSRI, and most felt able to tell them apart from their depression. It shaped whether they kept taking the drug.
Weak or heavily disputed. Treat as a question, not an answer. how we score evidence
Caveat on this rating: Qualitative: it describes and does not count. Part of the material came from patient websites, a self-selected source. Participants' confidence that they could separate side effect from symptom is a self-report, and the same group's later survey found blunting tracks depression severity. The six themes are not in the abstract.
The study that took "I feel nothing" seriously enough to describe it, and built the questionnaire everything since has used.
Significant findings
The starting point: "Some people who take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants report that their experience of emotions is 'blunted'. This phenomenon is poorly understood." Price, Cole and Goodwin set out to understand it from the patient's side, through individual interviews, a group interview, validation interviews, and a search of patient websites for relevant posts.
"There was strong evidence that some people taking SSRIs experience significant emotional symptoms that they strongly attribute to their antidepressant." The symptoms fell into six key themes, with a seventh for the impact on everyday life and an eighth for why participants believed the drug, not the illness, was responsible.
The distinction people drew: "Most participants felt able to distinguish between emotional side-effects of antidepressants and emotional symptoms of their depression or other illness."
The conclusion: "Emotional side-effects of SSRIs are a robust phenomenon, prominent in some people's thoughts about their medication, having a demonstrable impact on their functioning and playing a role in their decision-making about antidepressant adherence."
The other direction
This is qualitative research: it describes and organises what people said, and it counts nothing. It cannot say how many people are affected; the same group's 2017 survey was built to answer that. Part of the material came from patient websites, which are where people go to describe a problem, not where people go to say a drug is fine. And "felt able to distinguish" is a report of confidence, not a test of accuracy; the 2017 survey later found blunting scores rise with depression scores, so the line people draw for themselves may not be where the data draws it.
What this does not show
The six themes are not listed in the abstract, and this row does not invent them. The study proposes no treatment, and nothing in it is a reason to stop or change a drug. Its finding that blunting shapes adherence is a reason to raise it with a prescriber rather than act on it alone.
Worth asking
When I say I feel flat, are you hearing a symptom or a side effect, and how would we find out?
Source
Emotional side-effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: qualitative study — Price J, Cole V, Goodwin GM (2009)
Top-tier peer-reviewed journal
Read the source: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.108.051110
DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.108.051110
How this was scored
- Study design
- Case series or case report
- Funding
- Funding not disclosed
- Published in
- Top-tier peer-reviewed journal
- Sample size
- not recorded
- Preregistered
- not recorded
- Conflicts disclosed
- not recorded
- Independent of proponent
- not recorded
- Retracted
- No
Read the full scoring rubric, including what it can't tell you.
Published September 29, 2026.
Questions
How strong is the evidence behind this?
veisund rates this source "contested". Weak or heavily disputed. Treat as a question, not an answer. It scores 38 out of 100 on our published rubric. One caveat travels with that badge: Qualitative: it describes and does not count. Part of the material came from patient websites, a self-selected source. Participants' confidence that they could separate side effect from symptom is a self-report, and the same group's later survey found blunting tracks depression severity. The six themes are not in the abstract. The score is calculated from recorded facts about the source — study design, funding, publication venue, sample size, preregistration — not typed in by an editor.
What is the source for this?
Emotional side-effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: qualitative study — Price J, Cole V, Goodwin GM (2009). Published in: Top-tier peer-reviewed journal. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.108.051110. The full source is linked on this page so you can read it yourself.
Who paid for this research, and does that matter?
Study design: Case series or case report. Funding: Funding not disclosed. Independence from the proponent is not recorded. Industry sponsorship is one of the most reliably measured biases in medicine, which is why funding carries real weight in the score rather than sitting in a footnote.
Is this medical advice?
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.