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 another special episode today which is dedicated to the latest updates in the ongoing complaint against the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists.

So, by way of background, for those that may be new to this, on March 9th this year, a group of 30 academics, psychiatrists and people with lived experience, wrote to the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists to challenge public statements

that senior members of the college had made about antidepressant withdrawal. In a letter to the

Times newspaper, which followed media reporting of a large antidepressant meta-analysis published in the

Lancet, the chair of the Royal College's Psychopharmacology committee wrote the following.

The statement that coming off antidepressants has disabling withdrawal effects in many patients,

which often lasts for many years, is incorrect. We know that in the vast majority of our patients,

any unpleasant symptoms experienced on discontinuing antidepressants have resolved within two weeks

of stopping treatment.

The complaint lodged following that letter both provided evidence that counted this two-week

claim and also requested that the Royal College provide the evidence upon which that statement

was based. One of the signatories to the complaint, Professor Sammy Timomey, took time out to

explain a little more about the complaint and where we had got to in the process. Professor Timomey took time out to explain a little more about the complaint

and where we had got to in the process. Professor Timomey is a consultant child and adolescent

psychiatrist and visiting Professor of Child Psychiatry and Mental Health Improvement

at the University of Lincoln, UK. He writes from a critical psychiatry perspective on topics

relating to mental health and childhood,

and has published over 100 articles, tens of chapters, and authored, co-authored or co-edited 10 books.

Sammy, thank you so much for making the time to chat today for the Mad in America podcast.

To begin, I wanted to ask if we could talk a little about why you, along with other academics and psychiatrists,

...