Dr Anders Sørensen: The Problem with Psychiatry, Withdrawals & Informed Consent
21 May 2026
With Anders Sørensen
Global
Clinical psychologist Dr Anders Sørensen argues that human distress is routinely overpathologised and converted into a long-term pharmaceutical problem. Speaking with the Beyond Gender hosts, he examines the difference between genuine relapse and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, the informed-consent gap in prescribing practice, and the case for hyperbolic tapering as a safer route off medication. In an Irish context — where antidepressant prescribing is among the highest in the EU and gender services are still taking shape — his call for psychotherapy over medication and for honest risk disclosure carries clear practical weight.
Dr Anders Sørensen is a clinical psychologist and the author of Crossing Zero: The Art and Science of Coming Off — and Staying off — Psychiatric Drugs. In this conversation with the Beyond Gender hosts, he challenges the psychiatric industry's tendency to pathologise ordinary human distress, arguing that emotional pain which makes sense in its context is too readily reframed as a medical condition requiring pharmaceutical management rather than psychological exploration. A central clinical point in the episode concerns the difference between relapse and withdrawal. When patients stop antidepressants and their symptoms return or worsen, this is routinely read as evidence that the original diagnosis was correct and the drug is needed long-term. Sørensen argues that what is often happening instead is withdrawal — a physiological response to discontinuation rather than a resurgence of the underlying condition. This distinction is consequential: the two interpretations lead to very different clinical decisions, and Ireland, where antidepressant prescribing rates are among the highest in the EU, is not exempt from this pattern. The episode devotes considerable time to informed consent. Sørensen's concern is that patients started on psychiatric drugs are frequently not told about the difficulties of stopping them, the reality of withdrawal syndromes, or the limitations of the evidence base for long-term use. Irish clinicians operate under professional and statutory obligations — including HSE prescribing guidelines and the standards set by the Medical Council — that require clear communication of risks and alternatives. How consistently those standards are met in psychiatric prescribing is a question this episode puts plainly on the table. Sørensen also outlines hyperbolic tapering — reducing medication in progressively smaller percentage steps rather than fixed dose reductions, based on the non-linear relationship between dose and receptor occupancy. This approach can substantially reduce withdrawal symptoms but is not yet standard practice in most clinical settings. For people in Ireland seeking to reduce or stop psychiatric medication, access to informed guidance on tapering varies considerably between general practice and specialist services. The broader relevance of this conversation to the concerns of the Beyond Gender podcast is direct. The same logic that converts distress into a diagnosable biological condition — and so bypasses the question of why a person is suffering — operates in the pathway from gender dysphoria to early medical intervention. When emotional pain is categorised as a disorder with a pharmaceutical or physical fix, psychotherapy is marginalised. Sørensen's argument that distress is often intelligible and should be met with therapeutic exploration applies with equal force to gender medicine. Ireland is still developing its gender services, and the questions this episode raises about informed consent, overpathologisation and the primacy of psychotherapy are precisely the ones that need answering before those services become further entrenched.
