How Academic Psychiatry Minimized SSRI Withdrawal
If academic psychiatry is evidence-based, why did it take two decades to recognize SSRI withdrawal as widespread and chronic among patients?
How to Avoid Severe SSRI Withdrawal Symptoms?
After long-term use, most people are going to have serious symptoms when stopping SSRIs. Many people are going to have transient, mild to moderate difficulty and some are going to end up falling down the akathisia rabbit hole. That is a long, difficult drop.
Holistic Approaches: A Proven Treatment for Psychotropic Drug Withdrawal
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Mind Body Medicine, this case series is the first of its kind to document the methodology employed in the successful discontinuation of a range of psychotropic medications, with holistic support interventions providing long-term mood support.
The Reckoning in Psychiatry Over Protracted Antidepressant Withdrawal
Medically-induced harmâaffecting tens of millions of people worldwideâhas taken the field decades to take seriously.
Playing the Odds: Antidepressant ‘Withdrawal’ and the Problem of Informed Consent
If I thought that it was possible, I would have opened a string of clinics all over the country to help get people off of antidepressants. Unfortunately, the problems that sometimes occur when people try to stop an SSRI antidepressant are much more severe and long-lasting than the medical profession acknowledges, and there is no antidote to these problems. The truth is, giving people information about taking antidepressants is like giving information to people who are enroute to a casino; they go because they hear that some people win (at least for a time), but the losers are the ones who ultimately pay for it all â and the odds are not in their favor.
Things Your Doctor Should Tell You About Antidepressants
The conventional wisdom is that antidepressant medications are effective and safe. However, the scientific literature shows that the conventional wisdom is flawed. While all prescription medications have side effects, antidepressant medications appear to do more harm than good as treatments for depression.
A Different Psychiatry Is Needed for Discontinuing Antidepressants
The problems related to the use of antidepressants cannot be solved by an oversimplified psychiatry brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry.
The New Yorker Peers into the Psychiatric Abyss… And Loses Its Nerve
The New Yorker's story on Laura Delano and psychiatric drug withdrawal is a glass-half-full story: It addresses a problem in psychiatry and yet hides the deeper story to be told. A story of how her recovery resulted from seeing herself within a counter-narrative that tells of the harm that psychiatry can do.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 4: Withdrawing from Psychiatric Drugs (Part 1)
Very few doctors know anything about withdrawal and make horrible mistakes. If they taper at all, they do it far too quickly because the few guidelines that exist recommend far too quick tapering.
Harrow + Wunderink + Open Dialogue = An Evidence-based Mandate for A New Standard...
In the wake of the new study by Dutch researcher Lex Wunderink, it is time for psychiatry to do the right thing and acknowledge that, if it wants to do best by its patients, it must change its protocols for using antipsychotics. The current standard of care, whichâin practiceâinvolves continual use of antipsychotics for all patients diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, clearly reduces the opportunity for long-term functional recovery.
Online Experts on Withdrawal
Online communities are stepping in to help people facing withdrawal effects amass information and receive support for their withdrawal experiences.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 4: Withdrawing from Psychiatric Drugs (Part 5)
Withdraw from psychiatric drugs at your own speedâaccording to what you feel. Donât reduce again before you feel stabilised on the previous dose.
A Massachusetts Benzo Bill That Mandates Informed Consent
H. 3594 would require pharmacists to distribute pamphlets containing information on benzodiazepine misuse and abuse, risk of dependency and addiction, handling and addiction treatment resources. This would be a major legislative response to the prescribing patterns for these drugs today.
The Temptation of Certainty: David Foster Wallace, Suicide and Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal
While increasing numbers of Americans are being prescribed antidepressants, the Centers for Disease Control reports that suicide rates increased 28% from 1999 to 2010. Trained professionals remain unable to predict who is at risk. Their guess is as good as chance.
Antidepressant Withdrawal: An Unknown Disorder?
Antidepressant withdrawal is no longer an unknown disorder since knowledge on this topic has grown enough to be translated into practice. As proposed by George Engel in 1977, medical doctors, including psychiatrists, can observe and listen to their patients and develop a program to treat withdrawal and restore health.
Do Antipsychotics Worsen Long-term Schizophrenia Outcomes? Martin Harrow Explores the Question.
Martin Harrow and Thomas Jobe have a new article coming out in Schizophrenia Bulletin that I wish would be read by everyone in our society with an interest in âmental health.â Harrow and Jobe, who conducted the best study of long-term schizophrenia outcomes that has ever been done, do not present new data in this article, but rather discuss the central question raised by their research: Does long-term treatment of schizophrenia with antipsychotic medications facilitate recovery? Or does it hinder it?
ďťżEarly Death Associated With Antipsychotics
There are a vast number of studies that document the diverse range of side effects caused by antipsychotic drugs. These adverse effects include brain...
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 4: Withdrawing from Psychiatric Drugs (Part 6)
Peter Gøtzsche gives advice on what withdrawal symptoms may look like and explains the dangers ofâand alternatives toâforced treatment.
Long-Term Antipsychotics: Making Sense of the Evidence in the Light of the Dutch Follow-Up...
In the 1950s, when the drugs we now call âantipsychoticsâ first came along, psychiatrists recognised that they were toxic substances that happened to have the ability to suppress thoughts and emotions without simply putting people to sleep in the way the old sedatives did. The mental restriction the drugs produced was noted to be part of a general state of physical and mental inhibition that at extremes resembled Parkinsonâs disease. Early psychiatrists didnât doubt that this state of neurological suppression was potentially damaging to the brain.
ďťżTardive Dyskinesia in the Atypicals Era: Is The Risk Any Less Today Than Before?
A few weeks ago, while I was at a birthday celebration, a friend who works in a mental health setting remarked that she was...
The Review on Antidepressant Withdrawal That Cochrane Wonât Publish
Peter Gøtzsche and Anders Sørensen on trying to get a review of methods for safe antidepressant withdrawal published in Cochrane: "They sent us on a mission that was impossible to accomplish" to "protect the psychiatric guild."
A Tale of Two Studies
With increasing evidence that psychiatric drugs do more harm than good over the long term, the field of psychiatry often seems focused on sifting through the mounds of research data it has collected, eager to at last sit up and cry, hereâs a shiny speck of gold! Our drugs do work! One recently published study on withdrawal of antipsychotics tells of long-term benefits. A second tells of long-term harm. Which one is convincing?
The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs
As I see it this website is about filling the gaping hole in the official literature on mental health problems and their treatment. Since these problems were declared to be diseases, âjust like any otherâ, academic papers present them as if they were simply technical glitches in the way the brain or mind works. They can be identified by ticking a few boxes, and easily treated by tweaking the corresponding defect with a drug or a few sessions of quick-fix therapy. What it is like to experience these problems and their treatments is nowhere to be found. Yet in post after post on this site among others, we hear about the harm produced by drugs that are prescribed for mental health problems.
How Long Does Antidepressant Withdrawal Last?
The patient experiencing the pain of withdrawal believed that they would feel better when they stopped taking their antidepressants. After all, theyâre under the care of a board-certified medical professional who has vowed to do no harm. But despite those reassurances, they find themselves in a world of hurt.
ďťżNow Antidepressant-Induced Chronic Depression Has a Name: Tardive Dysphoria
Three recently published papers, along with a report by a Minnesota group on health outcomes in that state, provide new reason to mull over...