New Script activist Siobhan McCallin has shared her personal experience of being prescribed antidepressants and her journey through recovery and healing, in an effort to help others access wider options.  Siobhan talked about how she had to be ‘less Katie Taylor and more Eckhart Tolle’ as she battled serious health challenges.

Siobhan was joined by Sara Boyce, New Script organiser and Dr. Nicola Duffy, a Derry based GP on the BBC Evening Extra news programme on Thursday 18 July for a discussion about the latest antidepressant prescribing data.

Latest figures show that 40% of females aged 45-64 years were prescribed an antidepressant in the past year. The overall rate of prescribing is 20%, but in the poorest communities this rises to almost 27% of the population. The past 20 years has seen a four-fold increase in prescribing rates, with women, older people and the poorest communities being disproportionately impacted.

New Script for Mental Health has highlighted why this inexorable rise in prescribing constitutes a major public health issue :

• antidepressants are often used to ‘treat’ societal problems such as poverty, inequality and intergenerational trauma;
• evidence exists of serious potential side effects, including dependency, sexual dysfunction, and possible suicidal ideation. People need to be fully informed of these risks so they can make informed choices, in consultation with their GP;
• antidepressant prescribing is not associated with an improvement in mental health outcomes at the population level.

Sara highlighted how medication has its place, but that currently its often the only option made available to people. In 2023, the antidepressant budget was just under £13 million, while spending on talking therapies was under £3million, across the five Health and Social Care Trusts.

New Script for Mental Health is calling for the following steps to be taken :

• The Health Minister, Mr. Mike Nesbitt MLA and the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr. Michael McBride, must publicly acknowledge this major public health issue facing our society.
• The Health Minister and the CMO need to show vision and leadership by developing a long term plan to reverse the rates of unnecessary prescribing.  The Westminster All Party Group on Beyond Pills has recently published an excellent report on what should a plan should contain.
• The National Institute for Clinical Excellence ( NICE) guidelines on safe prescribing and withdrawal management should be strictly adhered to by GPs.
• The Department of Health and the Executive needs to redirect resources and adequately fund and deliver non-medical options at the community level, including widely available and easy to access therapies, arts-based and peer led programmes. Examples of international best practice have been published by the World Health Organisation ( WHO).

In the context of this discussion, it’s important to emphasise that people should not stop taking antidepressant without consulting with their GP. Recent guidance from the Royal College of Psychiatrists and National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) recommends that people who experience withdrawal should taper off more gradually over months – and for some, years. This should be adjusted depending on the person and their symptoms. Read more here.