prescribing works,” Goldberg said.
Compared to other areas of medicine, psychiatry was 
slower to adopt the term “deprescribing,” and the field 
didn’t publish its first research paper on the topic until 
10 years ago, Goldberg explained. He noted that both 
prescribers and patients are often reluctant to stop medi-
cations since they already know what to expect, even if 
patients find they have persistent symptoms and things 
aren’t as good as they wish. 
In the VA setting, servicemembers and veterans are 
dealing with a lot of trauma and posttraumatic stress 
disorder, comorbidity with substance-use disorders and 
overuse with inappropriate prescribing of controlled 
substances. VA practice guidelines advocate against 
long-term use of benzodiazepines for PTSD, for example, 
but there’s not a clearly articulated statement on how 
deprescribe these medications, Goldberg pointed out. 
In the future, the researchers suggested that empirical 
trials are needed to assess the implementation of 
deprescribing protocols and gauge their safe, effective 
and acceptable outcomes. The authors also noted 
that residency (and nonphysician prescriber) training 
programs provide little education on timing, planning, 
context and logistics of ending a psychotropic treatment, 
so more guidance is needed for prescribers-in-training.
Goldberg and his colleagues recently published a 
related paper in The British Journal of Psychiatry on the 
deprescribing of psychotropic medications for mood dis-
orders.2 
1 Goldberg JF, McIntyre RS, Swartz HA, Freeman MP, American Society 
of Clinical Psychopharmacology Task Force on the Deprescribing of 
Psychotropic Medications. Recommendations for the Deprescribing of 
Psychotropic Medications: A Consensus Statement From the American 
Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology Task Force. JAMA Netw Open. 
2026 Feb 2;9(2):e260043. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.0043. 
PMID: 41739481.
2 Goldberg JF, Swartz HA, McIntyre RS, Mago R, The American Society 
of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP) task force on the deprescribing 
of psychotropic medications for mood disorders: Delphi expert 
consensus. Br J Psychiatry. 2026 Mar 25:1-9. doi: 10.1192/bjp.2026.10580. 
Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41877318.
General Concepts About the Deprescribing Process
Source: American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology Task Force on the Deprescribing of Psychotropic Medications. Recommendations for the Deprescrib-
ing of Psychotropic Medications: A Consensus Statement From the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology Task Force. JAMA Netw Open.. 2026 Feb 
2;9(2):e260043. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.0043. PMID: 41739481.
	
	
2 0 2 6  C O M P E N D I U M  O F  F E D E R A L  M E D I C I N E  
2 1
Abbreviation: PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder.

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