Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal Can Trigger Psychosis, Expert Says

From: http://www.cchr.org/index.cfm/13155

An expert in the effects of psychiatric drug treatments has stated in an upcoming scientific paper that withdrawal from psychiatric drugs can trigger psychotic reactions completely unrelated to any problem the person using the drug may have originally had. 

In the paper, psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff presents evidence supporting the view that “problems that occur after withdrawal of psychiatric drugs may often be related to the process of withdrawal of that medication, rather than the natural course of the underlying condition.”

The article, entitled, “Why is it so difficult to stop psychiatric drug treatment? It may be nothing to do with the original problem,” was accepted by the scientific journal Medical Hypotheses and is currently awaiting publication.

According to the paper, psychiatric drugs are able to generate symptoms of insanity on withdrawal, purely as a mechanism of the withdrawal, and this drug-induced insanity can then be interpreted as a “relapse” and used to justify putting the person back onto the drug. 

The paper notes that the drug-induced psychotic symptoms are consistent with symptoms of stimulant psychosis, such as that experienced by abusers of cocaine and amphetamines.

Exactly how the drugs drive people psychotic is not known, but the paper states that the psychotic reactions may be related to well-documented physical alterations that occur in the brain as it compensates for the effects of the drugs. 

Research has shown that when major tranquilizers inhibit the operation of a brain chemical known as dopamine, the brain can respond by supercharging certain cells to make up for the reduced amount of available dopamine.  The result is that the brain cells become physically altered in a way that makes them “supersensitive” to the effects of dopamine.  Then when the drug dosage is reduced, the return of dopamine to normal levels in the brain causes the supersensitive brain cells to react uncontrollably. 

The three stages of this drug-induced insanity, known as “supersensitivity psychosis,” were described in a 1980 paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Guy Chouinard and Barry D. Jones.  According to that paper, the stages range from a few days of psychotic symptoms to the unimaginable condition of being driven permanently insane as a result of the effects of the drugs.

The fact that psychiatric drugs can cause permanent derangement of brain cells that control the body has been known to psychiatrists for decades.  A physical condition known as tardive dyskinesia, which is widely acknowledged by psychiatrists as reflecting drug-induced neurological damage, confirms the capability of psychiatric drugs to derange pathways in the brain that control bodily muscles.  While major tranquilizers are considered to be the worst of these drugs, similar neurological damage has been seen with drugs outside the class of major tranquilizers, indicating that the problem is not limited to a single class of drugs.

Mental effects of such derangement have been harder to spot, and when seen have typically been attributed to the person’s “underlying mental condition” coming to the surface. With Moncrieff’s upcoming paper, derangement in thought-related portions of the brain caused by psychiatric drugs will be harder to blame on the poor tortured soul who is suffering its effects.