Following the Public Health England Report, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has published an excellent document on ‘Stopping Antidepressants’ including evidence-based tapering guidance, co-authored by IIPDW Associate Dr Mark Horowitz.
Professor John Read, Chair of the IIPDW Board, has written a blog in Psychology Today about his journey to find out more about antidepressant withdrawal effects, and the recent key developments in our understanding of the issue.
The Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center, which is a private psychiatric hospital located about forty minutes north of Oslo was set up by its director, Ole Andreas Underland to provide “medication-free” care for those who wanted such treatment or who wanted to taper from their psychiatric drugs. You can read more about it, and the rise of …
We’d like to spread the word about this FREE virtual screening of Medicating Normal on Thursday October 15th 2020 at 5.45pm UK time. Medicating Normal is a new, unreleased documentary that examines the current paradigm of mental health treatment including overdiagnosis, overprescribing and rampant polypharmacy. Renowned Stanford University psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke praised the film …
As part-time IIPDW Director, I am very happy to announce that IIPDW has a new administrator/coordinator. Her name is Lucy Fernandes, she lives in London and she will start her role on the 10th of August.
Will Hall provides a video update on his work for the Maastricht Survey on Antipsychotic Drug Withdrawal.
The third, updated and expanded ebook edition of “Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful withdrawal from neuroleptics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, Ritalin and tranquilizers” is now available.
Brief background and history In October 2016 a Scientific Symposium was arranged in Gothenburg by The Extended Therapy Room Foundation. In the invitation one could read: PHARMACEUTICALS – risks and alternatives The number of psychiatric diagnoses and prescriptions of pharmaceuticals to children, youths and adults have sharply increased in Sweden as well as the rest …
This is the first conference of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal, and will bring together international experts in the field, and leaders from many different countries. The three themes underpinning the conference are safe withdrawal from psychiatric medication, alternatives to psychiatric medication, and the need to question the dominance of medication in mental health care.
Coming off psychotropic drugs can cause physical as well as mental withdrawal resulting in failed discontinuation attempts and unnecessary long-term drug use. The first reports about withdrawal appeared in the 1950s, but although patients have been complaining about psychotropic withdrawal problems for decades the first – tardive – acknowledgement by psychatry only came in 1997 with the introduction of the ‘antidepressant discontinuation syndrome’. It was not until 2019 that the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists, for the first time, acknowledged that withdrawal can be severe and persistent. By Jim van Os and Peter C Groot.