The Benefits of Titrating Off Medications in Residential Treatment

AN INTERVIEW WITH: DR. DAVID SAFANI, MD. MBA, FAPA | MEDICAL DIRECTOR 

Interview

What are the benefits of titrating off medications in  Residential Treatment?

One of the benefits of working in a PHP or residential facility is that you can talk to the patient on a daily basis. You could check on them frequently as needed. They know that if they’re not doing well, they could come ask you about it. One thing that I’ve worked on for some of these patients that have come in and have been on medicines for a long time, in fact, people have often added something… because they’re still in distress. You know, the other medicines either did not do enough or they frankly didn’t work. And oftentimes, you know, we will add to try to get things better as they come into this program. We use a lot of therapy to help people get better, of course, and different types of therapy. I have the opportunity to say, Hey, this is a great time to start taking you off the medicine. Medicine they were very anxious about coming off of before, because what will happen if I do? And an outpatient setting, where you see a patient once a month or things like that can be a very scary time to do that. But a setting like this really provides an opportunity for us to slowly kind of peel away medicines to help them, in fact, sometimes even feel better, right? Medicines do have a lot of benefits, but sometimes they have side effects. And when you have lots of medicines and they’re interacting with each other, sometimes you do have, you know, adverse effects that may be making people feel worse. This is one of the benefits that we have, that we could slowly kind of do that. I’ve had patients that have come in on benzodiazepines that we’ve, they’ve been very scared. They said, this is the only thing that’s helped me, and we’ve been able to peel those off. And they just feel so much better because they realized they could rely on themselves, the skills, rather than the pills, to feel better. And that’s been a wonderful opportunity that I’ve had and enjoyed doing