Mark Horowitz, MD, PhD

Dr Mark Horowitz is a Clinical Research Fellow in Psychiatry in the National Health Service (NHS) in London, Visiting Lecturer in Psychopharmacology at King’s College London, an Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at University College London and a trainee psychiatrist. He has a PhD from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London in the neurobiology of depression and antidepressant action. He is the lead author of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, the first authoritative clinical handbook on how to safely stop antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.

He co-authored the recent Royal College of Psychiatrists guidance on Stopping Antidepressants, and his work informed the recent NICE (UK government) guidelines on safe tapering of psychiatric medications, including antidepressants, benzodiazepines and z-drugs. He has worked with the NHS to develop national guidance for safe deprescribing for clinicians and has been commissioned by Health Education England to prepare a teaching module on how to safely stop antidepressants.

He has written several papers about safe approaches to tapering psychiatric medications including publications in The Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry and Schizophrenia Bulletin. He has experienced the difficulty of coming off psychiatric medications first hand and has come off polypharmacy after being on these drugs for 20 years.

Despite numerous qualifications in this field, he learnt how to come off psychiatric drugs from peer-support websites. He is dedicated to making sure that other people do not suffer the same trouble he went through in coming off these drugs and giving people the opportunity to safely stop medications they no longer want or need.