Understanding Antidepressant Withdrawal © Coral Smith 2025 This post by Harriet Vogt follows on from her recent Ruptures in Clinical Care post The members of Shane Cooke and Mary Hennessey’s antidepressant withdrawal peer support group decided there was more to explore together after our first meeting. They wanted to dig deeper into their experiences of protracted … [Read more...] about Withdrawal Syndromes: Lost in Translation
addiction
Over-Diagnosing or Under-Diagnosing
This post follows on from Repairing Ruptures in Clinical Care and the Future of Health App-Ointments. It also links to An Appleby a Day and Tangled up in Bureaucracy. Repairing Ruptures had a lot of comments from Lucy. One of them kicks things off here. Lucy’s Struggle Since waking up to the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs, I have written countless letters to … [Read more...] about Over-Diagnosing or Under-Diagnosing
The Future of Health App-ointments
Several of the many people who write or track RxISK posts, have had input to this one, which dovetails with Harriet Vogt's post last week Repairing Ruptures in Clinical Care and the work of Shane Cooke and Mary Hennessey in getting health systems to listen to the voices of those harmed by treatment. The post, maybe, casts an ominous light on our abilities to get medicine to … [Read more...] about The Future of Health App-ointments
Madness, Normality and Antidepressant Dysregulation
Some weeks ago, Bob Whitaker asked me to do a Mad in America Continuing Education Webinar on the problems stopping Antidepressants. The talk with discussion is here Stopping Antidepressants and responses to points raised will be followed up in forthcoming posts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIlk1My4ZgQ I prerecorded the talk in case of disaster as Tapering … [Read more...] about Madness, Normality and Antidepressant Dysregulation
Where is the Great Light that is Supposed to Shine?
Around the time Bob Whitaker asked me to do a Webinar on Stopping Antidepressants, K filed a RxISK Report on her efforts to get off Prozac. Like many Reports, in her case it seemed clear she should never have been put in the situation she is now in - she didn't have a mental illness. She got sucked into a situation not of her own making. Some wonderful touches to her … [Read more...] about Where is the Great Light that is Supposed to Shine?
Breaking the Word of Promise to our Hope
Be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense; That keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope. William Shakespeare: Macbeth A storm blew up just over a week ago with a Lancet article on antidepressant dependence and withdrawal. Based on company studies, this article gave some credence to the idea that antidepressants … [Read more...] about Breaking the Word of Promise to our Hope
The Fantasies of Psychopharmacology
This talk was first given at a Medicating Normal Meeting for mental health staff in Lexington Kentucky organized by Geoff Wilson and a few days later in May at the invitation of Don Marks to a group of clinical psychologists in Kean University New Jersey. I'm hoping it will lead to feedback from both groups and others. It is twinned with Truth, Trust and Health also given … [Read more...] about The Fantasies of Psychopharmacology
Deprescribing – Where does Responsibility Lie?
This post follows on from last weeks Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing and has links to this weeks The Creation Narrative and God Complex. It brings up a painfully tricky point. Reducing Medication Burdens is perhaps the most important task in medicine today. Many well-meaning folk are aware of and raising the profile of this need and attempting to work out how to go … [Read more...] about Deprescribing – Where does Responsibility Lie?
Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing – PID
This post is linked to An Archipelago of Realities on DH.org. The link may not be clear when you start reading Archipelago but half way down it will be apparent. What is being said on Archipelago about SSRIs applies just as much to benzodiazepines here. Geriatric medicine came into being in the 1980s and with it a new word – polypharmacy – a phenomenon particularly … [Read more...] about Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing – PID
A New RxISK for a New Year
Our New Year’s resolution is to strengthen and expand RxISK.org. We want the website to reach more people who have problems or questions about their prescription drugs, and to offer them more resources. Even more important, we want to expand its role as a hub for you to share information about you experiences, hopefully in a way that might serve as a springboard for … [Read more...] about A New RxISK for a New Year