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  "description": "As cases like Jordan Peterson’s draw attention, longstanding questions about withdrawal, suicidality, and tapering can no longer be sidelined. ",
  "path": "/the-hidden-risks-of-psych-meds/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-23T00:30:55.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Maryanne Demasi",
    "released a video",
    "described",
    "stopping",
    "shown",
    "NICE",
    "medical",
    "colleges",
    "black box warnings",
    "experimental",
    "a plan for stopping",
    "theinnercompass.org",
    "prescribed-harm.com",
    "antidepressantinfo.org",
    "MISSD.co",
    "taperclinic.com",
    "brisbaneactcentre.com.au/tapering/",
    "Quitting antidepressants can be tricky",
    "Starting a medication is easy...stopping it can be much harder",
    "Antidepressants can cause ‘chemical castration’",
    "MD Reports"
  ],
  "textContent": "Maryanne Demasi\n_Maryanne Demasi PhD is an investigative journalist who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she was a TV presenter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)._\n\nRecently, podcaster Mikhaila Peterson released a video updating viewers on her father, Dr Jordan Peterson, who she says suffered a severe medication-related injury.\n\nIn 2020, Dr Peterson was prescribed the benzodiazepine ‘clonazepam’ during a period of intense personal stress.\n\n__L: Mikhaila Peterson R: Jordan Peterson__\n\nAccording to his family, the medication triggered a prolonged and debilitating reaction that left him with ongoing neurological symptoms.\n\nIn her latest update, his daughter says those symptoms have returned, despite him having been off the medication for years.\n\nShe describes episodes of **akathisia** – an extreme state of inner agitation – in stark terms: “the worst thing I’ve ever seen anyone go through… intolerable discomfort that makes people want to crawl out of their skin.”\n\nShe also recounts her own experience after stopping an SSRI antidepressant, saying the withdrawal lasted more than two years and left her, at times, unable to function.\n\nHer account is confronting, but it is not unique. It reflects a pattern that has been described for decades and is often under-recognised.\n\n### **The first time I heard about it**\n\nI first came across akathisia more than a decade ago while working on a documentary about antidepressants for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC TV).\n\nI interviewed patients, as well as psychiatrists and researchers from around the world.\n\nMany patients who had tried to reduce or stop their medications reported a cluster of symptoms – marked agitation, insomnia, and anxiety – that did not fit a straightforward relapse of their original condition.\n\nIn one conversation, a patient described the sensation as “unbearable,” saying she felt an urge to jump out of her skin and that it induced suicidal thoughts. The account was consistent with what others reported.\n\nThe documentary was researched for months, interviews were completed, and scripts were written. It reached the final stages in the edit suite before being pulled at the last minute.\n\nThe network was concerned about the public’s reaction – specifically, that the program might lead some viewers to question their medication, or even stop it – despite repeated messaging that these drugs should not be stopped abruptly and require medical supervision.\n\nThat decision censored real patient experiences from the public – especially those that challenged prevailing clinical assumptions.\n\n### **What is akathisia?**\n\nAkathisia is still often described in clinical settings as “restlessness.”\n\nBut that description fails to capture the reality of the patient experience.\n\nIt is a severe, whole-body state of inner agitation.\n\nIt has been described in medical journals as “an intense inner restlessness and a compelling need to be in constant motion,” often accompanied by marked distress and an inability to remain seated.\n\nCase reports describe a feeling of terror, a persistent sense of dread, and an urgent need to escape one’s own body.\n\nThis is why akathisia has been associated with suicidal ideation – not necessarily driven by depression, but because the sensation becomes unbearable, and death is perceived as a means of escape.\n\nIn some cases, symptoms can persist – a pattern now described in the literature as _benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction_ , or BIND, where neurological and psychological symptoms can continue for months or even years after the drug is stopped.\n\nThis has been described in cases like Peterson’s.\n\nAkathisia is not limited to benzodiazepines.\n\nIt has long been recognised as a potential adverse effect of a range of psychotropic medications, including antidepressants and antipsychotics.\n\nIt is frequently described as ‘rare,’ but the volume and consistency of patient reports suggest it may be more common than often assumed.\n\n### **Withdrawal and the problem of misdiagnosis**\n\nFor many years, withdrawal from antidepressants was described as mild and short-lived. That position has begun to shift, particularly as more patients have remained on these medications for years.\n\nResearch now shows that withdrawal symptoms are common. More than half of people stopping antidepressants report some form of withdrawal, and a proportion describe those symptoms as severe.\n\nThe difficulty is that withdrawal symptoms – anxiety, agitation, insomnia, and despair – overlap with the conditions these drugs are prescribed to treat.\n\nWhen a patient deteriorates after reducing a dose, the symptoms are often misinterpreted as relapse.\n\nThe medication is reinstated or increased, and the cycle continues.\n\n### **Why tapering cannot be rushed**\n\nPatients are often advised to taper over a few weeks, but that is inadequate for many.\n\nMikhaila Peterson addresses this directly, saying: “If you have a doctor that suggests you wean off of a long-term psych med in two to four weeks – run.”\n\nShe argues that reductions need to be much slower and individualised to avoid severe withdrawal.\n\nThere is now ample evidence to support this approach.\n\nResearchers such as Dr Mark Horowitz have shown that tapering, for some people, may need to follow a hyperbolic pattern – smaller and smaller reductions as the dose decreases – because of the way these drugs interact with receptors in the brain.\n\nIn practice, this can mean tapering over many months or years.\n\nGuidelines from NICE and some medical colleges now recognise that withdrawal can last months and that tapering must be individualised.\n\n### **Suicidality**\n\nAntidepressants are commonly prescribed to treat conditions in which suicidal thoughts may occur.\n\nBut in placebo-controlled trials involving children and adolescents, SSRIs were associated with an _increased_ risk of suicidal ideation – approximately four per cent on the drug compared to two per cent on the placebo.\n\nThat signal led to formal black box warnings from regulators.\n\nIn other words, in the very population where these drugs are often used to reduce suicide risk, the trials detected an increase in suicidal thinking during treatment.\n\nSeparate experimental work has shown that even healthy volunteers, with no psychiatric history, can develop agitation and suicidal thinking when exposed to these drugs.\n\nThese findings do not apply to every patient. But they suggest that in some individuals, these medications can produce the very symptoms they are meant to treat.\n\nThat reality is still not being communicated clearly.\n\n### **The gap that remains**\n\nAfter years of reporting on this, it is evident that people are not routinely given clear information about what stopping these drugs may involve.\n\nThey are told about the benefits, but are not given meaningful details about withdrawal, akathisia, the need for slow tapering, or the possibility of persistent sexual dysfunction after the medication is discontinued.\n\nThat is a failure of informed consent.\n\nThe Peterson case has brought attention back to a problem that has never gone away.\n\nPatients have been describing these experiences for years – often dismissed, often misdiagnosed, often left to navigate it alone.\n\nAs Dr Horowitz suggests, if a drug can induce physical dependence and withdrawal, then a plan for stopping it should be part of the prescription.\n\n**Resources** :\n\n_Inner Compass Initiative (ICI):_ theinnercompass.org\n\n_Prescribed harm:_ prescribed-harm.com\n\n_Antidepressant Coalition for Education:_ antidepressantinfo.org\n\n_MISSD (_ MISSD.co_)_\n\n_Taper Clinic:_ taperclinic.com\n\n_Brisbane ACT Centre:_ brisbaneactcentre.com.au/tapering/\n\n**Further reading** :\n\nQuitting antidepressants can be tricky\n\nStarting a medication is easy...stopping it can be much harder\n\nAntidepressants can cause ‘chemical castration’\n\nThis article was originally published by MD Reports.",
  "title": "The Hidden Risks of Psych Meds",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-23T00:30:54.638Z"
}