Priorities for Future Research on Reducing and Stopping Psychiatric Medicines (PROTECT) study – Survey deadline December 31st 2022

Dear Reader,

Please see below for an important message from our respectful EUFAMI Board Director, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor in Pharmacology at Uppsala University, Sweden, Dr Åsa Konradsson-Geuken.

“We are trying to increase responses of health practitioners to the Priorities for Future Research on Reducing and Stopping Psychiatric Medicines (PROTECT) study.  If you haven’t participated please do consider participating  or passing the link to you network. The survey will close on the  31^st December.

There are many unanswered questions about the process of reducing and stopping psychiatric medicines (commonly referred to as ‘tapering’) and how best to do it. It is important that future research focuses on the questions that are important to people with lived experience of taking and/or stopping any of these medicines, family members, carers/supporters and healthcare professionals.
The PROTECT study team, in partnership with the James Lind Alliance, has set up this priority setting partnership to identify the Top 10 priorities for future research about reducing and stopping psychiatric medicines. This study could help to change the research agenda which will allow future research to focus on the most important questions. The survey will take you about 5  minutes to complete.

EUFAMI Position Paper on Coercive Practice in Mental Health Services

Coercive practice, such as involuntary admission and coercive measures, such as seclusion, restraints and forced medication, are used in mental health services in all European countries. Compulsory treatment in the community is used in some countries. The rates of involuntary hospitalisations in Europe differ between countries[1].

EUFAMI believes that coercive practice, even when used as a necessary last resort based on national law, is essentially the failure of mental health services to respond with non-coercive alternatives.

In order to minimize coercive practice in mental health, training should be mandatory on topics of de-escalation skills, human rights, medical ethics, mental health legislation, alternatives to involuntary admission and use of coercive measure as well as on recovery culture.

Coercive practice should only occur as a last resort in circumstances when no less restrictive alternative will respond adequately to the risk of physical harm to the person themselves or others.

1] Marie Chieze1, Samia Hurst2, Stefan Kaiser1 and Othman Sentissi1, “Effects of Seclusion and Restraint in Adult Psychiatry: A Systematic Review”