Dr. Nicole CainAnxiety Healing | Holistic Mental Health

Best Tips for Getting Off Medication: A Doctor Explains

Name: Best Tips for Getting Off Medication: A Doctor Explains
Uploaded: 2019-10-31T17:30:09+00:00
Duration: 1 min 16 s
Channel: Dr. Nicole Cain
Description: Short advice from Dr. Nicole Cain on how to prioritize and begin tapering medications. She recommends stopping or tapering the least effective, most…

31 Oct 2019 · 1 min

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1:16

Short advice from Dr. Nicole Cain on how to prioritize and begin tapering medications. She recommends stopping or tapering the least effective, most side-effect-prone, most costly, or most recently started medication first, and choosing which drug to taper based on the symptom being treated (e.g., taper mood stabilizer/antipsychotic first for depression; taper antidepressant first for mania).

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Another thing to look at is are you on just one medication or multiple medications for the same purpose? So if you're on multiple medications, here's what you do. First, you want to start tapering off of the medication that is least effective for you or the one that has the most side effects, the one that has the highest cost or the medication that you started most recently. And so as you're looking at your prescriptions, consider those variables as you plan your taper. Another thing to think about is are there several medications that you're taking that have different purposes? If so, start the taper with the medication that's the least helpful for managing the current state that you're in. If you're depressed, for example, taper the mood stabilizer or the antipsychotic first versus if you're dealing with more mania, stopping or discontinuing the antidepressant is going to be where you're going to want to go first.