Sinead describes her 16 years of treatment with antidepressants, her attempts to withdraw and how she feels about starting medications for her emotional distress

This week, I interview Doctor Peter Groot from the User Research Center of the Maastricht University. As some of you may know, I have been running a petition for some time to raise awareness of something called ‘tapering kits’. Very simply, tapering kits are tablets in decreasing dosages that would help users who wanted to withdraw from their psychiatric drugs to do so safely and in a controlled way.

Recently, I was contacted by Dr. Peter Groot from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Dr. Groot and his colleagues in the Cinderella Therapeutics Foundation have invested considerable time in researching and creating exactly what my petition refers to. They have created Tapering Strips, which are a method by which users of many classes of psychiatric drug can safely withdraw. Dr. Groot and his colleagues have been able to provide tapering strips to more than 2,000 Dutch patients to help them withdraw from their medications safely. Needless to say, I was very excited to hear that this solution had been created and was actually helping and supporting users of antidepressant drugs. Dr. Groot kindly took time out of his busy schedule to talk to me about his own experiences with antidepressants, his approach when creating tapering strips and some of the difficulties encountered along the way.

#antidepressants #antipsychotics #benzodiazepines #withdrawal #tapering #mental health