Stopping Long-term Antipsychotics with Dr Joanna Moncrieff - PREVIEW

ABOUT ISPS-US ISPS-US promotes psychological and social approaches to states of mind often called "psychosis" in treatment, education, and advocacy through collaborations between service providers, experts by experience, and family members. Join us in our mission by becoming a member at www.isps-us.org This is a sample of the described webinar. Want to watch the full video? Visit our website: https://isps-us.org/what-we-do/educat... WEBINAR DESCRIPTION Professor Joanna Moncrieff will present her reflections on the outcomes of the RADAR Trial, a major randomized controlled trial conducted in the UK that examined the effects of discontinuing versus maintaining long-term antipsychotic treatment. The trial found that while reduction led to a greater risk of relapse compared to continued maintenance treatment, there were no differences in social functioning, symptoms, side effects, or quality of life after two years. Yet relapse was far from inevitable and the qualitative analysis showed that some people felt empowered by the opportunity to reduce their medication with official support, regardless of the outcome. Dr. Moncrieff will discuss these nuanced findings and their broader implications for mental health care. ABOUT THE PRESENTERS Dr. Moncrief is a Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London, and also works as a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS in London in a community mental health team. She has researched and written about the over-use and misrepresentation of psychiatric drugs and about the history, politics and philosophy of psychiatry more generally for several decades now. She has been leading UK government-funded research on reducing and discontinuing antipsychotic drug treatment (the RADAR study), and collaborating on a study to support antidepressant discontinuation. In the 1990s Dr. Moncrieff co-founded the Critical Psychiatry Network to link up with other, like-minded psychiatrists. She has written numerous scientific papers and several books including A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs Second edition (PCCS Books), published in September 2020, as well as The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs (2013) and The Myth of the Chemical Cure (2009) (Palgrave Macmillan). Her website is https://joannamoncrieff.com/ Twitter handle @joannamoncrieff