Swapnil Gupta, MD, MBBS, assistant professor of psychiatry, and John Daniel Cahill, MBBS, assistant professor of psychiatry, have written the paper, “A Prescription for ‘Deprescribing’ in Psychiatry.” It was published March 15 in the journal Psychiatric Services.
In this open forum article, Gupta and Cahill argue for the development of guidelines for refining medication regimens in response to shifts in risk/benefit ratios.
They adopt the term "deprescribing," initially used in geriatric medicine, and propose a general outline of how deprescribing can be implemented in psychiatry.
According to their paper, deprescribing is defined as the “systematic process of identifying and reducing or discontinuing drugs in instances in which existing or potential harms outweigh existing or potential benefits, taking into account the patient’s medical status, current level of functioning, and values and preferences.”
They write that the end goal of deprescribing is “not necessarily the complete cessation of medications but rather their parsimonious use.”
Psychiatric Services is a journal of the American Psychiatric Association.