Hi everyone
I need a bit of advice concerning my sister who due to depression was taking 200mg sertraline and 10mg propranolol for 4 years and after informing her GP she was not getting any help from the meditation she took her off the sertaline by lowering the dose from 200mg to 100mg in only 2 weeks. Now she is taking fluoxetine 20mg and getting bad headaches. Is this normal practice for a doctor to wean a patient of this type of medication (sertaline) in only 2 weeks?
Hi and thank you for caring so much about your sister.
Medication should be reduced slowly, slowly using a method called tapering.
A good resource is
But the doc added a new antidepressant (fluoxetine) so that should be smoothing out the taper. It does seem kinda fast though. Has she mentioned the headaches to her doc? The fluoxetine may need to be increased to help smooth out the transition, or, it could be unrelated.
I've read of many times where doctors and even psychiatrists recommend way too short of a taper off medication than what is actually best for the person and it causes them problems. Most of the doctors and psychiatrists have never been on medication and have no real idea what it can be like. I would suggest you have your sister double or even triple the tapering time, she can even get a pill cutter at a pharmacy to cut the pills down to smaller doses. Slower is definitely better for a lot of people.
Tapering/weaning is very normal. Sometimes it is cold turkey. I went down quickly. I am not sure how adding the new one impacts the rate of tapering. Until she is off the sertraline 100% it would be hard to tell which is the cause of headaches. Keep her hydrated and getting good sleep. If side effects get worse then call the doctor back.
Thanks you for all the good advice, I have told her to call her GP if the headaches continue. I personally think the 2 week taper was too fast but that's over and just hope she feels a bit better with the fluoxetine as she has had a hard time of it lately. No energy, sleeping odd hours, only eating peanut butter sandwiches with the odd banana. Cant help but to worry and try and give her some good advice.
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