MIA Articles about Psychiatric Drugs and Withdrawal

A new article discusses the lack of research dedicated to discontinuing psychiatric drugs and reviews existing strategies.

MIA's Richard Sears interviews psychotherapist Anne Guy about working with clients withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.

The problems related to the use of antidepressants cannot be solved by an oversimplified psychiatry brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Researchers suggest that the pharmaceutical industry had a vested interest in using the term “discontinuation” in order to hide the severity of physical dependence and withdrawal reactions many people experience from antidepressants.

New research finds the negative drug effects most commonly associated with initiating antidepressant discontinuation are anxiety, suicidal thoughts, vomiting, and rashes.

Psychiatric meds can shut down the emotions and consciousness enough to make it possible to tolerate dynamics that would inspire rage or surges of empowered activity without the meds. It can be helpful to look closely at these blocks and start to create a map to freedom, understanding that it is a complex process that involves not only the physiology of the body of the individual taking meds, but the architecture of the social system around that person.

New guidance for primary care doctors in the UK on antidepressant discontinuation acknowledges severe and long-lasting withdrawal symptoms.

Findings point to the role of withdrawal symptoms and prescriber practices in long-term antidepressant use.

The phrase "medication tapering" is being used more and more as the preferred term for the psychiatric medication withdrawal or coming off process. Based on my years of work educating many people around coming off medications -- clients, support groups, and in workshops and trainings -- I think that term is misleading, and let me explain why.

In 1994, Italy's Giovanna Fava, editor-in-chief of the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, wrote for the first time of his concern that "long-term use of...

“My life was very, very good.” That’s how Michael sums up how things were for him—prior to his suffering from devastating withdrawal effects after discontinuing GlaxoSmithKline’s blockbuster drug Paxil.

Zoloft caused up to six-fold increases in build-up of atherosclerosis plaque in the coronary arteries of monkeys.

Researchers find a lack of current literature on safe, effective ways to manage antidepressant withdrawal and make suggestions for future research.

Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome characterized by long-term adverse experiences after coming off of antidepressants.

Growing rates of long-term psychiatric drug prescriptions and documented issues with withdrawal demonstrate a need for safe deprescribing practices.

Dutch investigators will soon publish an article in Neurochemistry International that sheds light on how SSRI antidepressants affect the serotonergic system over the longer...

This month, the seventh study and eighth study came out on the topic of antidepressant exposure during pregnancy and autism.  And these studies showed, as essentially all of the others have, that antidepressant use during pregnancy (principally with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) is associated with autism in the exposed children. With so many children being diagnosed with autism and so many women taking antidepressants during pregnancy, everyone wants to know: are these things (the antidepressants) associated with autism or not?  Quite frankly no one has the time to read through all eight scientific papers (and dozens more animal and basic science studies) to understand this important area, so I will do my best to briefly summarize it here.

Our main reason for beginning an awareness month is the need for recognition-- a yearning to make the word “iatrogenic” and its corresponding language available to our community, and to the greater public as a household name. We don’t have the luxury of raising money for research, racing for the cure, or ribbons. For that we would have to be on the map. Why is it that something this pervasive gets so little traction?

Millions of patients find themselves caught in the web of psychiatric sorcery - a spell cast, hexed, potentially for life. They are told that they have chemical imbalances. They are told that the most important thing they can do for themselves is to "take their medication," and that they will have to do so "for life." Most egregiously, patients are sold the belief that medication is treating their disease rather than inducing a drug effect no different than alcohol or cocaine. That antidepressants and antipsychotics, for example, have effects like sedation or blunting of affect, is not a question. That these effects are reversible after long-term exposure is.

A new study promotes the use of a standardized approach to antidepressant tapering.

Part of what has scared me straight about ever starting a patient on an antidepressant (or antipsychotic or mood stabilizer) again is bearing witness to the incredible havoc that medication discontinuation can wreak. I am half way through the first e-course of its kind (on withdrawing from psych meds), and it has been incredibly well-received. There are so many people out there, disenfranchised by psychiatry, skeptical of its promises, and who want a better way, a more thoughtful assessment of them as whole persons. We seem to be onto something here, so let’s keep the dialogue flowing, keep our eyes wide open, and reform what psychiatry means, one patient at a time.

Antidepressant users share their frustrations towards a healthcare system that overprescribes but is ill-equipped to support with discontinuation and withdrawal symptoms.

Lithium appears to reduce libido and sexual function, and more research into the problem is needed.

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, here’s 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?

Professor John Read and colleagues recently wrote to the President of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists to raise concerns about statements made in a letter published in the Times newspaper. Having not received a satisfactory response to this letter, Professor Read and colleagues have today lodged a formal complaint with the Royal College of Psychiatrists.