Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs

The Icarus Project and Freedom Center’s 52-page illustrated guide gathers the best information we’ve come across and the most valuable lessons we’ve learned about reducing and coming off psychiatric medication. Based in more than 10 years work in the peer support movement, this Guide is used internationally by individuals, families, professionals, and organizations, and is available in a growing number of translations. Includes info on mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, risks, benefits, wellness tools, psychiatric drug withdrawal, information for people staying on their medications, detailed Resource section, and much more.

A ‘harm reduction’ approach means not being pro- or anti- medication, but supporting people where they are at to make their own decisions, balancing the risks and benefits involved. Written by Will Hall, with a 55-member health professional Advisory Board providing research assistance and more than 50 collaborators involved in developing and editing. The guide has photographs and art throughout, and a beautiful original cover painting by Jacks McNamara.

Will Hall is a co-founder of the award-winning Western Massachusetts peer-run support and activism community Freedom Center, is on the staff collective of The Icarus Project, and has worked as a consultant for Mental Disability Rights International's campaign in Argentina. Diagnosed with schizoaffective schizophrenia, Will relies friendships, holistic healthcare, yoga and meditation for his wellness, rather than psychiatric medications. He considers his ongoing experience with madness to be a 'diverse-ability,' not a disability, that is intertwined with trauma but has strong creative and spiritual aspects.

Will is producer and host of the weekly radio program Madness Radio; Voices And Visions From Outside Mental Health, broadcast on community radio stations in Massachusetts and Alaska as well as available online and as a podcast. He has written recently for Adbusters and Turning Wheel: A Journal of Engaged Buddhism, and has been interviewed in the New York Times, Forbes magazine, and on National Public Radio.