Antipsychotic Withdrawal - a Spotlight on Research

This online webinar brings together a panel of researchers who have published work on the topic of antipsychotic withdrawal: Professor John Read, Professor Joanna Moncrieff, Dr Miriam Larsen-Barr and Will Hall. Each panellist will give a short talk summarising their research, what it can tell us, and what is left to learn. Afterwards, the panellists will come together with Olga Runciman, for an hour-long discussion of the key themes emerging from their talks, and answer questions from the audience.

About IIPDW

The International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal is a not-for-profit organisation, founded in 2017, working towards greater understanding of withdrawal from psychiatric drugs and better services for those wanting to reduce or stop their drugs.

IIPDW is at its heart a group of experts in psychiatric drug withdrawal from 20 countries across the world - and counting. Among us are those who've taken and withdrawn from psychiatric drugs or supported others on their journey, as well as researchers, mental health professionals and writers.

We support the development of research as well as practice-based knowledge to inform service design, clinical guidelines and policy internationally. The human right to informed choice, and the importance of friends, families and supportive professionals in psychiatric drug withdrawal are central to our ethos.

About the speakers

Dr John Read

John Read is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London. John worked for nearly 20 years as a clinical psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, before joining the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994, where he worked until 2013.

He has published over 200 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adverse life events (eg child abuse/neglect, poverty etc.) and psychosis. He also researches the negative effects of bio-genetic causal explanations on prejudice, the opinions and experiences of recipients of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medication, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in mental health research and practice.

John is a member of the Board of Hearing Voices Network – England. He is also the Editor of the scientific journal ‘Psychosis’. John´s books include: Read, J., Dillon, J. (eds.). (2013). Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis, 2nd edition. Routledge. Read, J., Sanders P. (2010). A Straight Talking Introduction to the Causes of Mental Health Problems. PCCS Books. Geekie, J., Randal, P., Lampshire, D., Read, J, (eds.). (2012). Experiencing Psychosis: Personal and Professional Perspectives. Routledge.

Professor Joanna Moncrieff

Joanna Moncrieff is a Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London, and works as a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS in London. She researches and writes about the over-use and misrepresentation of psychiatric drugs and about the history, politics and philosophy of psychiatry more generally. She led 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 she co-founded the Critical Psychiatry Network to link up with other, like-minded psychiatrists. She is author of numerous papers and her books include 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

Dr Miriam Larsen-Barr

Dr Miriam Larsen-Barr is a clinical psychologist in New Zealand who has a long history in the service-user movement and brings multiple lenses to her work as a clinician with both lived experience of successful antidepressant withdrawal and family member experience of antipsychotic withdrawal.

Her doctoral research project, The Experiences of Antipsychotic Medication Study (TEAMS), produced a freely available thesis exploring lived experiences of antipsychotics from first prescriptions through to attempted discontinuation. This included the online TEAMS survey that has since been used to inform several other research groups, and an interview study exploring how people who successfully stop antipsychotics manage their experiences during and after withdrawal.

After several years working in public mental health services with children and adolescents facing severe mental-health challenges and young adults experiencing a first episode of psychosis, she now locates herself in peer-led spaces and operates a small service-user informed private practice.

Miriam continues to advise on other withdrawal initiatives and research projects, publish her findings, share information and resources with the community, and provide therapy for people who want to develop the strengths they need to manage withdrawal safely for themselves and others. She maintains her involvement in the service-user movement and is one of the founding members of Aotearoa Therapists with Lived Experience Network (ATLEN).

Will Hall

Will Hall is a schizophrenia diagnosis survivor and longtime organizer with the psychiatric survivor movement. He is a PhD candidate at Maastricht University and lead researcher on the Maastricht World Survey on Antipsychotic Drug Withdrawal, and author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs and Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, as well as host of Madness Radio and a co-founder of the Hearing Voices Network USA.

Will Hall, MA, DiplPW, PhD Candidate Maastricht University, is a therapist and community development worker changing the social response to madness. A schizophrenia diagnosis survivor and longtime organizer with the psychiatric survivor movement, he is host of Madness Radio, co-founder of Freedom Center, Portland Hearing Voices and Hearing Voices Network USA, and past co-coordinator of The Icarus Project. Will has appeared in several documentary films including Crazywise, Healing Voices, and Coming off Psych Drugs; A Meeting of Minds, and in the New York Times, Newsweek, Radio New Zealand, Radio Sarajevo, and The Guardian. Will has a certificate in Open Dialogue and a diploma in Process Work, and received the Judi Chamberlin Advocacy Award and the Stavros Center for Independent Living Disability Rights Award. He is author of Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness and the Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, translated into 14 languages. www.willhall.net

When Will was interviewed in the Portland Mercury weekly newspaper he said "When I was growing up, I wanted to be a magician. Then I wanted to be a biologist, then I wanted to be a psychologist, then I wanted to be a community organizer, then I wanted to be a philosopher. Now I’m sort of all of them.”

Olga Runciman

Olga Runciman is the first and only psychologist in private practice in Denmark to specialize in psychosis. She is an international trainer and speaker, writer, campaigner, and artist. She is a co-founder of the Danish Hearing Voices network. She is a board member for a variety of organizations including Intervoice, Mad in America, The Danish Psychosocial Rehabilitation Organization and others. She is currently finishing her three-year open dialog education as a family therapist.

As a postpsychiatric psychologist, Olga has helped many people taper off or withdraw from their psychiatric drugs and has built up extensive everyday knowledge on how to best help people who wish to do this.

Olga views mental distress from a post-psychiatric perspective and does not believe there is a correct way to frame madness. She believes in opening up spaces where other perspectives can assume a valid role and does not seek to find solutions within psychiatry. Instead, she advocates that we should be moving beyond psychiatry, encouraging an acceptance that not all human problems can be grasped in a modernist technological manner.

Joining Info

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Note on Timings

Please note all timings are written in BST, UK time.

The event will begin 8.30am PDT, 11.30am EDT, 5.30pm CEST.

For NZDT, the webinar will begin at 4.30am on Saturday 18th October.

To check the starting time where you live, this is a useful website: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter