Global Health Asia-Pacific July 2020 July 2020 | Page 52

Cover Story
Doctors sometimes prescribe psychiatric medications because
they don’t have alternatives to offer
Being told she
was treatmentresistant
and
seeing her
problems as a
neurochemical
abnormality, she
saw suicide as
the only way out
point and made a failed attempt on her life.
“My suicidal experiences and I shared something
akin to a passionate love affair that grew stronger over
time. It was a relationship that I both yearned for and
loathed, relied on and desperately tried to pull myself
away from, but because I was convinced that the roots
of my suicidal urges rested in bad brain chemistry, I
felt powerless to do anything about them,” she wrote
in her blog.
Being told she was treatment-resistant and seeing
her problems as a neurochemical abnormality, she
saw suicide as the only way out.
“My relationship to the mental health system turned
me into a living, breathing ghost, left with only one
logical next step to take,” Laura wrote.
However, after surviving the suicide attempt, she
did find a less destructive alternative by weaning
herself off her rich pill regimen during a long and
agonising period of tapering beset with fears, hard-toexplain
emotions, and several discomforts like nausea,
aches, and profuse sweating. Though there’s scant
research on the topic, those who give up psychiatric
drugs can experience a wide variety of withdrawal
symptoms that can last for a short time or many years.
In 2018, she launched The Withdrawal Project
to provide people who are struggling to wean off
psychiatric drugs with useful tips. With mental health
professionals often having limited clue on the safest
way to taper off psychotropic drugs, people often look
for help online. The Withdrawal Project is an attempt
to collect, organise, and make accessible the insights
of those who have gone through the experience.
While breaking free from the mental health complex
didn’t give Laura complete inner peace, perhaps a
pipe dream for every single human being, it did allow
her to regain control over her life.
“It’s not that in this space of freedom the pain
suddenly goes away. This, really, is the whole point.
For I’ve learned since becoming an ex-patient that
the purpose of life isn’t to be free from pain, but to
believe in yourself in the midst of it. It’s to know that
in the deepest part of yourself there’s a reason for the
struggle that’s meaningful and must be listened to,”
she wrote.
All of this is not to say, however, that everyone has
a disastrous experience with antidepressants and
psychiatric drugs.
Despite unpleasant side effects like impaired
memory and headaches, Dr Solomon found the state
created by SSRIs as an acceptable compromise. “It’s
not ideal, but it seems to have put a real wall between
me and depression,” he wrote on his website.
�ltimately, it’s up to sufferers to decide whether
drugs are the way to go for them, and health
professionals will need to provide comprehensive
information about their pros and cons.
“Many people feel they have been helped by
antidepressants, and some are happy to consider
themselves as having some sort of brain disease
that antidepressants put right. These ideas can be
reassuring. If people have had access to balanced
information and decided this view suits them, then
that is fine.
“But in order for people to make up their own minds
about the value or otherwise of antidepressants and
the understanding of depression that comes in their
wake, they need to be aware that the story the doctor
might have told them about the chemical imbalance in
the brain and the pills that put it right is not backed up
by science, and that the evidence these pills are more
effective than dummy tablets is pretty slim,� wrote Dr
Moncrieff.
The explosive rise of antidepressants
The potential risks associated with antidepressants
deserve particular scrutiny because they’ve grown into
some of the most widely prescribed drugs, at least in
high-income countries.
In 2015 and 2016, antidepressants were the most
commonly used prescription drugs among U.S.
adults between 40 to 59 years old, according to the
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. An
estimated 17.3 million adults had at least one major
depressive episode in 2017, half of whom received
drug treatment, according to the US National Institute
of Mental Health.
A report by Express Scripts showed a 15
percent surge in the number of Americans taking
antidepressants between 2015 and 2019. And the
psychological ripple effects of the coronavirus
pandemic are further fuelling this trend, with an
increase in antidepressant prescriptions and antianxiety
and anti-insomnia medications between mid-
February and mid-March of this year.
Many other millions take antidepressants every
50 JULY 2020 GlobalHealthAndTravel.com