The Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry has been appointed as the Secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence (APPG for PDD).
The APPG for Prescribed Drug Dependence (PDD) will address the growing problem of dependency on prescribed medication. Increasing numbers of prescriptions for addictive, psychoactive drugs are being given to both adults and children, including benzodiazepines, antidepressants, antipsychotics, stimulants and painkillers. While these drugs may help some people in the short term, there is growing evidence that long-term use leads to worse outcomes, and many patients report devastating persistent withdrawal and other negative effects. The APPG will engage with this issue by demanding appropriate services for those affected, proper training for medical professionals, reduced prescribing through adherence to new and existing guidelines, better data regarding the prevalence of PDD and more research into long-term harms associated with PDD.
The APPG for Prescribed Drug Dependence was launched at a meeting held in the House of Lords on 30 June 2015. The APPG is chaired by Paul Flynn MP, with David Tredinnick MP, Lord Patel of Bradford, Baroness Mashem of Ilton and the Earl of Sandwich all elected as co-chairs.
The website for the APPG for PDD can be found at prescribeddrug.org.
My daughter has been prescribed Clozapine and told to take it for the rest of her life for a condition of schizophrenia but she has got more than 1 diagnosis and no doctors under the NHS cares – we have been victims of bullying by not only medical professionals but non medical professionals and taken to ct of protection. My daughter is happy at home but there is nothing but bullying going on by staff who use their powers to try and destroy your family not caring about risk in terms of physical health. Much money is being wasted with court action to try to sever contact and to send someone back to care. It has been over a year and I have had to turn to top professionals abroad. There are no facilities to safely withdraw and on two occasions when my daughter tried to get herself off the prescribed drugs in one go she suffered from withdrawal symptoms and this was seen as symptoms of illness. My daughter is doing well at home but I have to pay for carers – there is noone we can turn to in my local area and the UK should be ashamed at the cruelty going on. I am in touch with mothers who care who have sons and daughters stuck in secure units and this is not because they have done anything seriously wrong. These young people are on enormous quantities of drugs and written off like rubbish – the parents are happy to stand alongside me to give this publicity- surely it is cheaper to give direct payments to the families concerned so they can at least have provided some activities. Doctors in the main in the UK seem to only care about drugging people to the hilt and some of these young people were abuse victims not always down to the family and shame on the professionals who ha e been so nasty behind our backs in the files – instead of all the bullying by professionals there should be proper help and facility for someone to go in as regards withdrawal of these terrible drugs – by the way my daughter is treatment resistant – poor or non metaboliser and how comes my younger daughter is on top of the world – people are being misdiagnosed – at a tribunal it should not be just risk to self and others but risk to the patient and how about proper assessments given in the first plsace before giving these drugs.