Professor of clinical psychology, interested in psychiatric epidemiology, psychopathology, mental health care assessment, and evidence-based medicine
Zurich, Switzerland
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New prospective cohort study published by my group with @markhoro We show that rapidly increasing depressive and anxiety symptoms during antidepressant tapering likely reflect withdrawal reactions - and not relapsing mental disorders.
Open access: karger.com/pps/article/doi/1…
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Led by Carola Huber, head of the brilliant research department of Helsana health insurance, we published a new study on the association between long-term antidepressant use and dementia risk:
link.springer.com/article/10…
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We examined longitudinal health claims data of 19155 AD users and 20648 propensity-score matched non-users. Long-term AD use was defined as continuous AD use for more than two years:
Long-term AD use was associated with increased dementia incidence
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Michael P. Hengartner, PhD retweeted
Mental Health 'Awareness':
"1. lowers the threshold for what counts as a disorder.
2. trains people to scan their inner lives for symptoms and reinterpret normal distress as pathology.
3. Once someone adopts an illness identity, they behave in ways that confirm & deepen it".
Imagine a 19-year-old scrolling TikTok. She watches a creator list five "signs you have undiagnosed anxiety." She recognizes three in herself. By the end of the week, she's describing herself as anxious to her friends. A month later, she's avoiding situations she used to handle fine.
What went wrong?
In a new paper by my PhD student Dasha Sandra, titled "Why mental health awareness can harm: Converging explanations for a societal problem", we argue that well-meaning mental health awareness can backfire, and we identify how. Four separate literatures (concept creep, nocebo effects, prevalence inflation, and illness self-labeling) have been circling the same problem from different angles. We show they converge on three mechanisms:
1.Awareness lowers the threshold for what counts as a disorder.
2. It trains people to scan their inner lives for symptoms and reinterpret normal distress as pathology.
3. Once someone adopts an illness identity, they behave in ways that confirm and deepen it.
The evidence is wide. Learning that loneliness is harmful makes solitude feel worse. Learning that stress is harmful worsens well-being and performance. Awareness videos about fake conditions like "wind turbine syndrome" produce real headaches. Trigger warnings raise anticipatory anxiety without reducing distress.
This does not mean awareness should stop. It means awareness can have unintended consequences, including manufacturing the suffering it tries to prevent. Inoculating people against these mechanisms works, and we already have evidence it does.
Link to paper: michael-inzlicht.squarespace…
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Michael P. Hengartner, PhD retweeted
Summary of our serotonin and depression paper: link.growkudos.com/1pvlcw42s…. @markhoro @HengartnerMP
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Michael P. Hengartner, PhD retweeted
@HengartnerMP talk “Creeping Depression: The Expansion of The Concept” at the Critical Paychiatry Nerwork Symposium, UCL, 17 April 2026
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I published a new paper on concept creep in narcissistic personality disorder. It shows that the semantic expansion and over-inclusive use of the concept of pathological narcissism is a real thing with potentially negative practical consequences
sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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I welcome this paper stressing the adverse long-term effects of antipsychotics and their potential to cause anhedonia and dysphoria. But it bothers me that these adverse effects were long downplayed and admitted just as a new drug class entered the market
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam…
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I gave an interview for Swisslectures on depression and its prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment (in German):
Videopodcast: piped.video/BeGwchKISZ0
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Well done, Mark and Joanna. Important contribution! 👇🏼
We published a summary article on "Helping people to discontinue antipsychotics: if, when and how" (with @joannamoncrieff) and responses from many psychiatrists/commentators bit.ly/3YvEuXs
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Michael P. Hengartner, PhD retweeted
Undisclosed conflicts of interests for authors of top psychiatric publications
“Substantial undisclosed financial COIs were identified among the top 10 earners in high-impact psychiatry journals. These findings highlight potential risks to research transparency and integrity.”
Sigh
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Michael P. Hengartner, PhD retweeted
Any idiot can prescribe meds- takes real clinical & interpersonal skill to deprescribe them.
Less is often more- subtracting meds often helps more than adding.
Failure to deprescribe main cause harmful polypharmacy.
Excellent interview shows how to partner with the patient:
The Clinical Craft of Psychiatric Medication Tapering: Q&A with Anders Sørensen (@_AndersSorensen )
“Successful tapering is inherently patient-led, and there’s a kind of humility in accepting that.”
psychiatrymargins.com/p/the-…
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Michael P. Hengartner, PhD retweeted
About a quarter of “healthy” young adults think they have ADHD (28%), according to new research. But that number jumped to more than half (58%) after they received an ADHD awareness campaign based on popular ADHD advocacy groups’ material. worrying? bit.ly/48gFZNK
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My letter with @ReadReadj and @PloederlM has now been published in JAMA Psychiatry. We comment on the meta-analysis by Kalfas et al, which concluded that withdrawal reactions from antidepressants are rare and transient and thus of no clinical relevance.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam…
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Encouragingly, in their rebuttal Kalfas et al admit that "there is clearly a need for further research in this area" and that we need "better data on the frequency and severity of discontinuation after long-term use". Note that by long-term use they mean longer than 12 weeks...
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