How Mistaking Relapse for Withdrawal Can Lead to ECT

     Dr. Anders Sørensen, a Danish clinical psychologist specializing in psychiatric drug withdrawal, helps people taper safely off psychiatric drugs by using gradual, hyperbolic dose reductions. He also helps them work through any prior underlying emotional or mental symptoms. He is the author of Crossing Zero: The Art and Science of Coming Off and Staying Off Psychiatric Drugs .

     He was recently invited to Washington DC to speak at the Mental Health and Over – medicalization Summit about how withdrawal from psychiatric drugs is repeatedly mistaken for relapse. That misidentification puts someone right back on their medication and, in some cases, even increases it. A complete transcript of his talk is on his May 8^th Substack post.

     Sorensen presented the key factors leading to this dangerous mis-identification and the ensuing and further over-medication of patients. He cites the 2025 study in The American Journal of Medicine which revealed that the major antidepressant trials available only follow medicated patients for eight weeks, on average.

     That short duration of study shows little to nothing about the long term effects of those antidepressants on the body and the brain.

     Consequently, the results of those short term trials are virtually worthless because the median duration of antidepressant use in America is a full five years. An eight week study has little practical applicability to those taking antidepressants in the real world.

     Over that long term ingestion of antidepressants, Sorensen points out, the body adapts to its altered brain chemistry. The longer the duration of taking antidepressants, the harder it is for the body to adapt back again to a medication-free state. If someone tries to stop their medication too quickly, the system rebels and is thrown quite out of balance.

     Hence, severe withdrawal symptoms. One begins to experience dizziness, nausea, headaches, muscle discomfort, shaking, burning sensations, and fatigue…in varying levels of intensity. Such abrupt drug cessation can be painful. One also experiences a host of debilitating emotional and mental states such as anxiety, panic, insomnia, irritability, depressed moods or mood swings, brain fog, difficulty concentrating and bothersome, unexpected thoughts.

     In other words, these intense physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms can look like the patient is relapsing into the original symptoms of the initial diagnosis that started their antidepressant prescription in the first place.

     When this misidentification occurs, the patient is then put back on the original medication, its dosage is often raised, other psychotropic drugs can be added to it, and when none of that full cocktail works, the patient is labeled “treatment resistant” and is given electroshock therapy, voluntarily or involuntarily.

     Sorensen does not cover that in the transcript of his report to the Washington Summit, but that is what happens too often in the real world when proper, careful, slow tapering is not done and when psychiatrists are too blind to distinguish withdrawal from relapse.

     And that gap matters. Especially when it comes to dependence and withdrawal. 

     Time matters. Because the body adapts.

     If you alter brain chemistry for long enough, the body adapts – not overnight, but gradually, over months and years. And the longer that adaptation has been building, the more sensitive it becomes to change, and the harder it gets to come off.

     In many cases, that means tapering over years. Because when you then remove the drug or reduce the dose too quickly –the system is thrown out of balance. That imbalance is what we call withdrawal; an imbalance between what the system expects – and what it gets.

     What’s confusing is that withdrawal from psychiatric drugs isn’t just physical symptoms. It’s not just dizziness, nausea, headaches, muscle pain, shaking, burning sensations, fatigue. It’s that, too.

     But it’s also anxiety, panic, insomnia, irritability, depressed mood, mood swings, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, intrusive thoughts. Withdrawal can mimic relapse. Or new diagnoses.