Well, you could have reacted more objective. Even though you were offended, it usually does not help to backfire. Apart from that your argument is valid, however most patients drop their medications without support from their doctor. It’s basically physically impossible to not have symptoms on these cold withdrawals.

To give an example: Neuroleptics (anti psychotics) block dopamine receptors longer than dopamine would. Once medication begins, the brain adapts to the lack dopamine effectiveness and mostly switches dopamine receptors into their sensitive mode (there are two types of receptors and switching the types is cheaper for the brain than producing new receptors). Once a patient withdraws o’s brain will be flooded with dopamine causing heavy symptoms, so the only reasonable method is to slowly withdraw, where each dose reduction should be held for at least 4 weeks, in which one can and will have symptoms, however these do not necessarily indicate an onset of a new episode. Without at least social support you can forget to successfully withdraw from the drugs. It most likely will not work.

I personally had limited medical support, as in being able to convince them to reduce the dose to the lowest available concentration, but had social support for the last step. I took a few months to finally get clean and had almost zero symptoms, so lucky me. Most psychiatrists only focus on the meds though, even though long-term studies indicate a bad prognosis for long-term medication, especially since the brain will adapt faster with higher dose, requiring higher doses over time. This results in a decrease of 1 to 2 decades of life time, especially if they are treated in specialized medical facilities.

Another factor, that can get relevant is a systemic constellation enforcing the illness. That’s basically a form of hospitalization, just out of a hospital and created by the social environment. The social environment adapts the patient being ill and the patient subconsciously gets the information, that o has to be ill. This can only be treated by systemic therapists and has nothing to do with the medication. I’ve had contact with people considered untreatable, who finally recovered after the systemic approach.

I’m aware that North America is a lot more capitalistic in regard of mental illness treatment and I would deem most of the initial treatment unnecessary. My sister lives in Canada and got a questionnaire for her children, which did not allow to select no illness. To be frank, that’s one definition of insanity.

The information is based on a german 50 page document of a social psychiatrist from the University of Greifswald. It is not a paper, but was targeted at patients and dependents. It would not be helpful to provide it to a English speaking community.

I hope this was informative. Have a nice day.