Posted by med_empowered on August 14, 2005, at 16:20:59
In reply to Re: Medication backlashes » sleepygirl, posted by Phillipa on August 14, 2005, at 12:20:27
you're definitely right--just like with benzos, stopping many other psychiatric meds definitely leads to some sort of withdrawal problem, not just a re-emergence of pre-existing problems. Antidepressant withdrawal is finally being recognized as a problem, even though problems were noted in some of the eary studies of Prozac, Effexor, etc. As for antipsychotics...the old ones induced "dopamine hypersensitivy"; basically, since youre blocking off dopamine, the dopamine parts of your brain "up-regulate," or become more sensitive to dopamine. This is why you can have reactions to an antipsychotic for the first couple weeks and then they seem to get better--your brain has become more efficient at using the reduced supply of dopamine available to it. The problem is that if you withdraw suddenly from an antipsychotic, or don't taper slowly enough, your brain is suddenly exposed to a normal level of dopamine, but its become sensitve to it, so it goes into a kind of "dopamine overload" phase. This is why some studies have suggested a "supersensitivity psychosis" occurs; in some people without psychosis given antipsychotics (for behavioral problems, anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, etc.), the patient will develop a psychosis upon withdrawing from the antipsychotic. And those with psychotic disorders who withdraw suddenly from antipsychotics may have a much *worse* psychotic episode than they ever did before taking medication. Fortunately, it appears that slow tapering of antipsychotics can prevent this; some studies have shown that "relapse rates" for people gradually withdrawn from antipsychotics are about as low as those maintained on long-term antipsychotic treatment...that's why some European countries recommend neuroleptic-free periods and/or very, very low-dose, short-term neuroleptic treatment.
poster:med_empowered
thread:541382
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050811/msgs/541610.html