Coming Off Antidepressants: What Psychologists Need to Know

About the seminar

As psychologists, we may increasingly encounter clients who are considering reducing or stopping antidepressants, are already in the process of doing so, or are struggling with unexpected experiences following withdrawal. Yet antidepressant withdrawal and deprescribing are areas many psychologists have had relatively little opportunity to learn about.

This seminar explores what psychologists need to know when working alongside clients who are coming off antidepressants, with a particular focus on the psychological and therapeutic dimensions of the process.

Drawing on clinical examples and a combined psychological and pharmacological perspective, we will explore:

• Antidepressant withdrawal and deprescribing: Why people choose to reduce or stop medication, what withdrawal can look like, and factors that may influence its severity.

• Tapering and withdrawal: Including the principles behind gradual and hyperbolic tapering and why withdrawal may become more difficult at lower doses.

• Withdrawal versus relapse: How to think critically about symptoms emerging during or after antidepressant reduction, aside from assuming a recurrence of the original disorder.

• The psychological effects of antidepressants: Including emotional numbing, cognitive effects and the implications these may have for psychological therapy and learning.

• What can emerge as medication is reduced: Such as, increased emotional intensity, sensory sensitivity, panic, trauma-related experiences and difficulties tolerating previously muted internal experiences.

• Psychological formulation and intervention: Considering clients' histories, beliefs, coping strategies, somatic responses and current context, and the role of psychoeducation, validation, distress tolerance and emotion regulation.

• More complex withdrawal presentations: Including delayed or protracted withdrawal, akathisia, and presentations that may be mistaken for new or recurring psychological disorders.

The seminar aims to give psychologists a stronger framework for understanding what may be happening when clients reduce antidepressants, incorporating this into psychological formulation, and working effectively alongside clients and other health professionals during the deprescribing process.