“How Tapering Strips Can Help Safely Wean off Antidepressants: Study Results”

Stopping antidepressants can lead to withdrawal symptoms. Tapering strips are a tool to prevent these complaints. Researchers Prof. Jim van Os & Dr. Peter Groot investigated how a client can gradually and safely taper off antidepressants with the help of these tapering strips.

Read in English >

More than a million people in the Netherlands use antidepressants, medicines that are sometimes prescribed for depression and anxiety disorders. Stopping antidepressants can be difficult, because weaning them off too quickly can lead to withdrawal symptoms. To prevent this, it is important to reduce gradually. Tapering strips offer a solution. The researchers now know for the first time how many steps and how gradually a client needs to taper off using tapering strips investigated.

Taperingstrips

Taperingstrips are a series of sachets, each containing the medication for one day. As a result, the tapering strips make it possible to reduce the dose in daily steps. Jim van Os, professor of psychiatry, explains: “The taper is hyperbolic. This means that the steps by which the dose is reduced become smaller and smaller as the dose is lowered. You can compare that to a slide: it becomes less and less steep towards the end, so that people can come down safely and without shocks.”

^{With tapering strips it is possible to reduce the dose in daily steps.}

Jim: “In the context of ‘deciding together’, it is decided in consultation with the patient at what rate they can reduce their medication with the aid of the tapering strips. Tapering strips thus enable a tailor-made tapering schedule.”

Fewer withdrawal symptoms

For this study, the researchers followed more than 600 patients for 1 to 6 months. They saw that the ‘hyperbolic’ and tailor-made tapering led to fewer withdrawal complaints over the entire tapering process (see Results box). Jim explains: “The more gradual the reduction was, the fewer complaints we saw.” Some other factors were also found to influence the amount of withdrawal symptoms. Women and young people were more likely to suffer from withdrawal symptoms. Jim: “Therapists can respond to this by offering an even better tailor-made tapering schedule.”

Successful reduction

The results of the study are in line with those of previous studies. This showed that tapering strips are effective, even in patients who have previously attempted tapering. In most cases, people who stopped taking antidepressants did not start using antidepressants again after tapering off with tapering strips. Jim is optimistic about the future: “Our research suggests that taper tapering can help a majority of clients to successfully discontinue an antidepressant. Even after years of use and after one or more previous failed attempts to quit.”