The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence is meeting today, May 11th, to discuss evidence of the link between the rise in disability and the record level of antidepressant prescribing. Both Robert Whitaker and Joanna Moncrieff will present their research and Peter Kinderman will chair a panel to debate the findings.
“It is clear that psychiatric drugs can have very significant adverse effects, especially when taken long term,” says Kinderman. “And we have seen growing evidence of the effectiveness of evidence-based psychological therapies. We therefore urgently need to drop the ‘disease model’ of mental health, and embrace a human-centred model, with many more social and psychological interventions and many fewer prescriptions of potentially harmful drugs.”
