Tag: relapse

Research undermines the prolonged use of antipsychotics in schizophrenia treatment, suggesting improved social functioning and quality of life with discontinuation.

Researchers argue that common study methods for psychiatric drugs may inadvertently minimize withdrawal effects and inflate drug efficacy.

Leading researchers point out that a new antidepressant study in NEJM failed to account for withdrawal symptoms, casting doubt on the results.

New guidance on how to taper and discontinue from psychiatric drugs from leading researchers Mark Horowitz and David Taylor.

Researchers developed a rating scale to better assess service users’ experiences tapering antidepressant and/or antipsychotic medication.

A new study investigates how antidepressant withdrawal effects often get confounded with depression relapse in clinical trials.

A researcher and service user Stevie Lewis recounts her own experience with antidepressant withdrawal and what she wishes her doctors knew.

Peer supervision is often silent and stigmatizing instead of including necessary, robust discussions around relapse.

Antipsychotic drugs are prescribed on the basis of trials that demonstrate a higher rate of ‘relapse’ in people who are withdrawn from these drugs compared to those who continue to take them. Yet, incredibly, there is no consensus about what ‘relapse’ means in this situation.

There is a lack of consensus in the definition of ‘relapse’ across randomized controlled trials of antipsychotic maintenance treatment for schizophrenia and psychosis.

A new study found that having been prescribed an antidepressant previously was associated with an increased risk of depressive relapse.

Mixed-Methods study explores the experiences of antipsychotic discontinuation among service users.

A new study explores how people manage to discontinue antipsychotic medication and examines how social supports may improve outcomes.

Brief psychodynamic and psychosocial interventions help maintain reduced depressive symptoms

While a 2-year outcome study by Wunderink, et al. has been cited as evidence that guided discontinuation of antipsychotics for people whose psychosis has remitted results in twice as much “relapse,” a not-yet-published followup of that study, extending it to 7 years using a naturalistic followup, finds that the guided discontinuation group had twice the recovery rates, and no greater overall relapse rate (with a trend toward the medication group having more relapse.)