'Coming Off Meds' back on agenda

Some alternatives are just too out there for a mental health conference called "Alternatives 2010." Or at least they were until the Lawrence-based conference presenter did a flip-flop, blogger Alison Bass reports.

Earlier today Bass explained that the National Empowerment Center removed the title of the workshop "Coming off Medications: A Harm Reduction Approach" from its materials about the five-day conference starting Wednesday in Anaheim, Calif. Workshop creator Will Hall backed out of the conference when he got word of his delisting. Bass, a former Globe medical reporter who now teaches at Brandeis University and Mount Holyoke College, asked National Empowerment Center executive director Dr. Daniel Fisher why Hall's topic was removed.

Fisher cited concerns about people stopping their medications abruptly and having bad reactions. Bass was not convinced.

"Why can't I buy this explanation?" she asked. "Possibly because, as Fisher, who is a psychiatrist himself, also admitted, the last-minute decision had a lot to do with the fact that Hall's workshop offered an alternative to working with psychiatrists and the prevailing biomedical model. 'Our concern is that people would do this without working with their psychiatrists,' Fisher said in a phone interview."

But there was another last-minute decision later this afternoon, Bass reports. Hall's back on the conference program and will present his workshop on such alternatives to medication as yoga, meditation, exercise, nutrition, and access to peer-run support groups.

"Sanity, it seems, has prevailed," she concludes.