How to quit psychiatric drugs

Introducing the Coming Off Psychiatric Meds website

"This website aims to give you up to date information about psychiatric medication, how it functions and the withdrawal process. It is put together by people who have been prescribed medication and withdrawn from it, and clinicians who have been involved in supporting this process. If we have a period of distress or confusion and receive medical help we are generally given a diagnosis and prescribed psychiatric drugs. Research suggests doctors tend to know more about putting people on medication than the actual withdrawal process."

http://www.comingoff.com/

The website states: "It is important therefore to disseminate information about the ‘coming off’ process. "

If you want to quit I say print out a copy for your doctor, your new doctor if need be.

and " Since the mental health system got you started on medications, it also has a responsibility to help you terminate that treatment as safely as possible if that is your choice.

A quote from from: http://www.mindfreedom.org/truth/truth-flyer-text/

And

Your Drug May Be Your Problem:
How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications

Whether the drug is a sleeping pill, tranquilizer, stimulant, antidepressant, mood stabilizer, or antipsychotic, Your Drug May Be Your Problem reveals its documented withdrawal symptoms, demonstrating what many doctors don't know, understand, or consider: withdrawal symptoms often mimic the symptoms for which a person has been medicated in the first place, a fact that frequently prompts doctors to mistakenly re-medicate their patients at even higher doses.

http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com ... &Itemid=42

Lets make a big pile of info on quitting here on this thread.

I have been on different psychiatric drugs for 6 years now (for bipolar disorder) and I have gained over 50lbs. I don't feel like I am eating more then 'normal' people though.
Regards,
Janine Zargar

hmm...luckily I never experienced any side effects, or benefits for that matter, of SSRI antidepressants. Mind you, I was on many of them for a matter of months. When I realized they were not going to help, I'd always quit cold turkey and noticed no withdrawal effects. I'm glad I stopped them before I became dependent.

Mood stabilizers and anti psychotics, however, are another story. I guess I should consider myself lucky, as the side effects I've experienced from most of these drugs were so severe and the onset so rapid, I had to stop them usually in a matter of days or under a month, thus not allowing myself to develop dependency. That being said, the first few nights after stopping most of the atypical antipsychotic drugs were much harder to fall asleep, but I've observed nothing else.

I can't imagine spending months weening myself off a drug I know to be causing more harm than good, having been taking it all that time with false hopes and a seeing a doctor that's blind to the true nature of what these drugs can do.

I've come to learn there is a serious disconnection from how the public and mental health industries view these drugs, and what they can do to a person. Not just 1 in a thousand or one in a hundred, but a huge amount of people. Once you start taking psychiatric medication, you're almost guaranteed to experience unwanted side effects to some extent, but there's no guarantee you'll feel better.

I feel obligated to mention that many people obviously benefit from medication, the good outweighing the bad, but for a hugely underrepresented amount of people, the exact opposite is true.