See article in the The Metro, 23rd March 2021 below:
We already knew this from our Taking Care of Medication Expert Group but it’s great to see that the renown psychiatrist Professor Robin Murray and colleagues now agree with us. We hope the leaders of our psychiatric services in Greater Manchester will read this and will act on the recommendations. We would be very happy to help the services make this happen in Manchester.
The report says:
“The process of stopping antipsychotics may be causally related to relapse, potentially linked to neuro-adaptations that persist after cessation, including dopaminergic hypersensitivity (check below for what this means) Therefore, the risk of relapse on cessation of antipsychotics may be minimized by more gradual tapering. There is converging evidence that suggests that adaptations to antipsychotic exposure can persist for months or years after stopping the medication”
(Note we think this is the same as dopamine super-sensitivity psychosis, a term used in psychiatry to explain the phenomenon in which psychosis (e.g. hearing voices and seeing things that other people do not see or hear) occurs despite treatment with escalating doses of antipsychotics.)
See full research article: Mark Abie Horowitz, Sameer Jauhar, Sridhar Natesan, Robin M Murray, David Taylor, A Method for Tapering Antipsychotic Treatment That May Minimize the Risk of Relapse, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2021 here.
CHARM 