I thought I'd already included this link but apparently not...

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Making sense of coming off psychiatric drugs - mind.org

Why are so many people taking these drugs?
Current psychiatric medical opinion encourages doctors to treat problems they have been taught to regard as 'illnesses' with medication. This means that if you have a psychotic episode, your doctor is likely to treat you with antipsychotic drugs (also known as neuroleptics or major tranquillisers) as quickly as possible. If you are diagnosed with schizophrenia or another psychotic condition, you might be prescribed antipsychotics for life; if the diagnosis is manic depression (bipolar disorder) you might be on lithium or other mood stabilisers for the foreseeable future.

You're likely to do slightly better if your problem is anxiety or depression. Doctors won't usually expect you to need medication for very long. No one should be taking a minor tranquilliser such as benzodiazepine, to treat anxiety, for more than four weeks continuously. However, some doctors still think that a person with depression needs ongoing antidepressants, in the same way that a person with diabetes needs insulin. This is a poor comparison. Diabetes is a physical condition with clear causes that are well understood. Insulin is a natural hormone with a very specific role in the body, and shouldn't be considered a drug. Taking it by injection causes few side effects. The same is not true of any psychiatric drug.

Experts are still not sure about the role of psychiatric drugs in controlling moods, emotions and other aspects of the life of the mind. We don't know how they interact with life events and other environmental factors. The most problematic group of psychiatric drugs, the antipsychotics, developed simply because they were seen to work. On the basis that these drugs seemed to have a helpful effect, a key theory about psychosis – the 'dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia' – was constructed. In other words, the drugs were not developed to meet an error of chemical activity in the brain that was already identified, and there is still argument about whether this theory is correct. (See below for information about brain chemicals.)

The pharmaceutical industry has always been very active in encouraging doctors to use their products, and society, in general, puts pressure on people to use medication. Much of the media, through ignorance, still circulates the mistaken idea that mental health service users who decide to stop taking their medication are putting society at risk. Doctors in Western Europe and America tend to be cautious about helping patients find other ways of coping with their mental health problems. It's rare to find doctors who are willing to take a different approach or help people withdraw, and who are well enough informed to support them in this. Your doctor may be anxious that if you stop taking your medication, there will be nothing to put in its place and that you will become ill again. (See What sort of support should I look for?)

Read the full article here: Making Sense of Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs


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