Without tailored clinical guidelines, antidepressant users seeking to taper off medication are turning to online communities instead of their doctors.
For many, antidepressants are a lifesaving treatment. However, for one in three antidepressant users in primary care, antidepressants may no longer be clinically beneficial and they may feel ready to stop taking it.
Long-term antidepressant use – defined as more than 12 months – carries the risk of adverse side effects including an increase in all-cause mortality, cardiovascular events, sexual dysfunction and emotional numbing. Yet, as the number of antidepressant prescriptions continues to rapidly rise globally, there is not an equal amount of routine deprescribing in clinical practice.
General practitioners (GPs) in Australia and worldwide, are uniquely placed to conduct deprescribing (a supervised and planned dose reduction) as they prescribe 86% of all antidepressants.
However, ceasing antidepressants is a complex process with many patient and GP barriers including a lack of safe guidance for tapering, fears of relapse and miscommunication between patients and doctors that jeopardises the doctor-patient relationship.
Continue reading this fascinating article by Amy Coe and Dr Kath Kaylor-Hughes that was recently published in Pursuit on 23 May 2024: Understanding Australian general practice patients’ decisions to deprescribe antidepressants in the WiserAD trial: a realist informed approach
You can also read their full research paper “Social media group support for antidepressant deprescribing: a mixed-methods survey of patient experiences” that was published on 6 May 2024 in the Australian Journal of Primary Health.