Doctors "Failing to help wean patients off anti-depressants".
Link to the actual article:- http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/sep/09/mentalhealth.socialcare
John Carvel, social affairs editor
Society Guardian, Friday 9 September 2005 13.58 BST
GPs give little support to millions of patients who would like to come off antidepressants because they cannot stand the side-effects, the mental health charity Mind said today.
It found doctors wrote 29m prescriptions for antidepressants and 17m for anti-anxiety and sleeping pills in England last year.
GPs were keen to hand out the drugs, but they were not able to tell when patients were ready to come off them - and not good at helping them do so, the charity said.
After the first research study into the difficulty of withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, it found 40% of patients saw the GP as unhelpful and 10% thought the doctor "made things worse".
Patients turned instead to internet and email groups that were rated helpful by 94% of users.
Most GPs were unable to predict when patients could come off drugs successfully. Indeed patients who weaned themselves off against doctors' advice, or without telling the GP, were more likely to succeed (53%) than patients following doctors' orders (44%).
The survey - based on interviews with more than 200 recent psychiatric drug users - found 70% had felt pressured to take the medication and 60% experienced problems coming off it. This rose to 68% among users of the SSRI group of antidepressants such as Seroxat and Prosac.
"Recent Norwegian analysis showed a clear link between Seroxat and significantly higher rates of suicide attempts," the charity said. "But last week the government rejected [Commons] health committee recommendations for independent publication of full clinical trial data."
Last year, Mind chief executive Richard Brook resigned from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority expert group, accusing it of failing to protect patients from unsafe dosage levels of Seroxat.
Alison Cobb, the charity's policy officer, said: "People who want to come off their drugs must have their decision respected, and be practically supported even by professionals who may not agree with them ... there is also an urgent responsibility for doctors to be provided with the fullest information on the drugs that they prescribe, from the MHRA and other sources."
