The Icarus Project and Freedom Center’s 52-page guide gathers the best information we’ve come across and the most valuable lessons we’ve learned about reducing and coming off psychiatric medication. Includes info on mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, risks, benefits, wellness tools, psychiatric drug withdrawal, information for people staying on their medications, detailed Resource section, and much more. A ‘harm reduction’ approach means not being pro- or anti-medication, but supporting people to make their own decisions balancing the risks and benefits involved. Written by Will Hall, with a 40-member health professional Advisory Board providing research assistance and 50 other collaborators involved in developing and editing. The guide has photographs and art throughout, and a beautiful original cover painting by Ashley McNamara.
The Guide is now available in a revised and expanded Second Edition.
Download a .pdf to read below. It is also easy to use the printer version to print and fold into a booklet (instructions below) for yourself.
You can also print multiple copies to distribute, or send the pdf file to a print shop for color copies and stapling.
Download a printer version, with scrambled pages ready to fold.
Download simple assembly instructions for the printer version.
Available in Spanish here… Disponible en Castellano/ Espanol. Spanish printer version here
Available in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian
Note that the guide is Creative Commons copyright and you are free to copy and distribute for non-commercial purposes, as long as you credit the source and don’t alter it.
Read about the making of the Guide.
Read about the making of the Second Edition.
Video on Coming Off Medications with Will Hall on YouTube
Audio talk on Coming Off Medications from 2009 Hearing Voices Congress
Article by on “Addressing Non-adherence to Antipsychotic Medication: a Harm-Reduction Approach” in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing
If you are looking for more information and support on psychiatric medication options including coming off / withdrawal, please see the Icarus Project coming off forums, the website Beyond Meds, the UK website ComingOff.com, and this audio on “Coming Off Medications”.
Also check out this video by Will Hall discussing coming off medications:
