All letters are subject to editing and may be shortened. General letters can be sent to bjgpdisc{at}rcgp.org.uk (please include your postal address for publication), and letters responding directly to BJGP articles can be submitted online via eLetters. We regret we cannot notify authors regarding publication.
For submission instructions visit: bjgp.org/letters
Stevie Lewis’s article ‘Four research papers’1 expresses what so many patients have experienced. GPs have been reluctant to engage with patients who have been trying to tell them about the serious (apparently unrecognised and/or significantly underplayed) problems with antidepressants.2–3 Now mid-2021, GPs are absolutely overwhelmed, as detailed by Clare Gerada in her ‘Stop skinning the cat’ article where she says, ‘I have never seen things so bad.’4
We are sounding the alarm that antidepressant problems are actually a definite contributor to ‘where we are’ and that initial decisions to prescribe antidepressants warrant urgent attention … as well as how to address the longer-term dependence issues that are clearly now evident.
Ed White’s article indicates what is occurring5 and concludes, ‘Ultimately, the members of these groups want to know their GP will acknowledge, understand, and support them if difficulties occur, and have the knowledge to help them avoid painful and sometimes debilitating withdrawal symptoms.’
The 14th edition of The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines for Psychiatry includes new information about antidepressant prescribing and ‘discontinuation’ order (maudsley-prescribing-guidelines.co.uk). The new Maudsley ‘deprescribing’ section apparently reflects, for psychiatrists, the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ (RCPsych) Stopping Antidepressants information for patients, the latter of which is freely publicly available.6 I encourage GPs to read this concise new RCPsych publication, which is endorsed by the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Professor Wendy Burn wrote a blog for the October 2020 BMJ Opinion (‘Medical community must ensure that those needing support to come off antidepressants can get it’)7 and she also spoke with James Moore about the patient experience in a podcast stream by the RCPsych ‘Stopping antidepressants: exploring the patient’s experience’.8
- © British Journal of General Practice 2021