Studies show that two effects of overstimulation, akathisia and agitation, are experienced by some people who take Prozac. Akathisia is a need to move about such as pacing, or the need to stand up. The person can feel anxious or irritable and can feel extreme agitation. Akathisia is related to a breakdown in the ability to control impulses. It has been associated with violent and suicidal acts in a number of reports and studies.
People can become extremely depressed, paranoid, suicidal and dangerous to others.
It has been estimated in a 1989 report in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry that the actual share of Prozac users who suffer from akathisia is between ten and twenty five percent. More rarely, Prozac has been associated with damage of one sort or another to almost every body system and organ from arrhythmia of the heart to inflammation of the liver to dysfunction of the thyroid gland. Prozac is relatively safe, but no drug is risk free. Prozac is not addictive and there is no known withdrawal syndrome, but people who have experienced a good response to it are often leery about coming off medication out of fear that they will return to their old way of feeling and behaving. Prozac has been around too briefly for anyone to know all of its long-term effects.