Psychiatric drugs as harmful as cigarettes

Siobhan Barry is a caring psychiatrist and has said that the long-term use of some psychiatric drugs can reduce life expectancy by up to 20 years (Irish Examiner, April 26), mirroring the position publicly adopted by the UK’s Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Dr Barry has called for more medical health screening for such patients.

This degree of reduced life expectancy is similar to that of long-term smoker’s. In the case of smokers, there have been concerted and vigorous efforts to encourage them to quit. Why don’t we now do something similar in the case of these psychiatric drugs? There is considerable evidence that many people do not need to take these drugs for years; weeks or months would be long enough.

We need to do more than monitor the physical health of those taking these drugs. We need to reduce our dependency on them. We also need to explore the promising alternatives. Failure to do this would be at least as ‘reckless’ as failing to monitor the physical health of these patients.

Dr Ciarán Crummey

Ararsain Pheadair

Bawnboy

Co Cavan