Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry and social justice.

Hello, this is James, and welcome to the Madden America podcast.

We have a special episode today, which is devoted to recent developments in the UK involving

the Royal College of Psychiatrists. These events relate to the media coverage of a widely reported

antidepressant meta-analysis in the Lancet, information on antidepressant withdrawal effects,

and a letter to the Times newspaper by the president of the Royal

College, Professor Wendy Byrne, and the chair of the Royal College's psychopharmacology committee,

Professor David Baldwin. Professor John Reed took time out to explain recent events and to talk

about a formal complaint which has been lodged with the Royal College on behalf of a group

of eminent psychiatrists

and psychologists. John, thank you so much for talking with me today for the Mad in America

podcast. Here in the UK, there's been a great deal of media interest in antidepressants recently,

partly in response to a meta-analysis that was reported in the Lancet on February the 21st.

I'm aware that recently there's

been correspondence between yourself and colleagues and the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists

in relation to information on antidepressant withdrawal, and I'd like to talk about that. But first,

it would be really useful if we could set the scene in terms of what we do and what we don't know

about withdrawal effects when

people come off their antidepressant drugs. And you recently undertook a study of 1,829 New Zealand

adults taking antidepressants. Could you tell us about that study and what the results were?

Yeah, indeed. This is the largest direct-to-consumer survey ever conducted.

And we found that 27% of the people in the survey described antidepressants as addictive.

...