Withdrawal, not relapse: analysis of an online forum for people coming off antidepressant medications

Pınar Üstel

Chapter 25 in Research Handbook on Society and Mental Health, 2022, pp 445-460 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter focuses on an online community that provides support for people coming off of antidepressants. A particular challenge that people face when ceasing use of psychiatric medications is identifying whether they are experiencing withdrawal or relapse. Drawing on forum posts and interviews with key informants, this essay explores how people collectively identify their condition as withdrawal, not relapse, and define withdrawal on their own terms. I find that people link seemingly disparate symptoms to withdrawal, explain why withdrawal occurs, and reify it as a condition with distinct patterns. I argue that people's changing understandings of the original diagnosis and of the appropriate ways of treating mental distress, hinge on this interpretive work.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781800378483/9781800378483.00030.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20327_25

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().