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Our new discussion series aims to explore what we do and don’t know about safe withdrawal from antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and stimulants. We will seek to present and explore new understandings emerging from professional and lived-experience communities. We will discuss the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to support those having difficulty getting off psychiatric drugs.

Naysayers will no doubt be out in force, spreading unnecessary pessimism, about the risk of dependence from use of these agents – however, just because ‘speedballs’ originated in the underground drug scene does not mean that there is not significant therapeutic value to be found in novel combinations of medications.

The heat is on for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Antidepressants: The Big Spin.

It’s World Mental Health Day as we publish this. On this day, while we think of how it is good to talk and that 1 in 4 of us (at least) will experience mental health problems, let’s try to remember some other people too. Let us try to remember the people for whom we pay £200,000 a year to keep out of sight and out of mind. Let us consider whether life at all costs is worth forcing people to live in hell. Let us ponder whether our care can harm people.

On MIA Radio we interview Dr. Derek Summerfield, honorary senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, former Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford and consultant at Oxfam.