Why Lay Management of Medication Withdrawal Is Dangerous

"Barry accurately underscores the harmful, widespread use of psychoactive drugs, where people may be taking as many as three or four medications. Indeed, she says that 25 percent of Americans took these medications during the coronavirus pandemic. Delano's experience is encouraging in that she felt better after stopping the medications she'd taken for many years-and she reports similar benefits for others in her lay business where she coaches them to taper and discontinue psychoactive agents."

"I'm surprised, though, that no one has spotted Delano's major error: blaming psychiatry for psychoactive medication overuse. It's well known that primary care and other medical clinicians prescribe more than 60 percent of all psychoactive drugs. 1 Beyond the numeric disparity, however, there's a further problem that leads to overuse. Medicine does not train medical doctors in mental health or the use of psychoactive drugs. 2,3 Yet, often at the urging of drug detail representatives, they prescribe most of them."

Overuse of psychoactive medications is widespread, with some patients taking multiple agents and roughly 25 percent of Americans using them during the coronavirus pandemic. Primary care and other nonpsychiatric clinicians prescribe the majority—more than 60 percent—of these drugs. Medical training does not adequately cover mental health, psychotropic prescribing, complicated tapering procedures, or close follow-up during discontinuation. Layperson coaching for tapering can produce individual benefits but carries significant risks when non-clinicians supervise withdrawal. Psychiatrists and other medication experts possess the training required to manage tapering, monitor withdrawal symptoms, and address complications, and therefore should supervise discontinuation.

Read at Psychology Today