guest blog by the MediBee team
Health monitoring through technological devices is becoming popular. Many have scrapped pen and paper when initiating a withdrawal program, and now use excel sheets to track progress and monitor medicine dosages. MediBee is an app for psychiatric med withdrawal.
Silvia Meyer, who is based in Denmark, has added an extra layer to digital health solutions. She is the CEO of the organisation MediBee, and has launched an iOS and Android app for psychiatric med withdrawal named MediBee that offers you support and an overview of your medicine withdrawal process. Silvia is also the founder of the Danish NGO Association Misbrugsportalen (Translation: misuse portal) that provides substantial help, support and information to individuals who are affected by drug and medicine addiction in Denmark. Silvia has recovered from an addiction herself, giving her 22 years of both personal and professional experience within the field of addiction and dependency.
Silvia has withdrawn from three different medical groups and verifies that physical and psychological withdrawals from high risk medicine are horrific to experience, if not carried out properly through regular follow ups, monitoring, individual evaluation and adjustment.
Some people manage to end their intake of a prescription medicine quite quickly, for example a few weeks of using painkillers or benzodiazepines. This is possible, because they have not yet reached a stage of dependency – something that causes the body to long for physical reactions set off by the drug.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for all people. Some medicines are more addictive than others, and some individuals are more prone to develop dependency than others.
People who intake medicine for long periods, for example antidepressants over the course of 6–9 months, are most likely able to relate to this – it is not a piece of cake to quit using a prescription medicine overnight. Even for those who have consumed a medicine for less than a year, there is a tremendous risk of experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms if tapering off too quickly. If this is not taken in to account by the healthcare professional providing the prescription, a rapid end to a medical treatment can result in an addiction.
By developing an app that lets you manage your medicine intake, Silvia, and the team behind MediBee, the app for psychiatric med withdrawal, raises two important social questions:
Were you aware that there are millions of people in the world who consume antidepressants, strong painkillers and tranquilizers for months – even year? Are you one of them?
The team behind MediBee is creating a health tech tool to help individuals across the world avoid side-effects, serious withdrawal-induced injuries and effectively medicine dependency. The aim is to prevent any user of prescription medicine from hitting rock bottom.
The app is relevant for you if you no longer feel that you benefit from consuming medicine, are experiencing negative withdrawal symptoms or simply if you just want to keep track of how your prescription medicine is affecting you – even if you are not lowering your medicine dosages right now.
MediBee app for psychiatric med withdrawal lets your record well-being levels, measure the intensity of your symptoms while motivating you during your medical treatment.
The goal is to help you gain an overview of your progress and let you share relevant information with healthcare professionals. At times where your doctor cannot be with you, the app can secure your safety by preventing unwanted symptoms and reactions through ongoing digital communication.
The team’s mission is to encourage as many as possible to raise awareness about this topic and break the prejudice that exists around people who struggle with pain, anxiety, depression, stress or similar conditions while relying on medication.
Right now, the MediBee team is looking for feedback about the first version of the app. You can join their Feedback Group and download the app on App Store or Google play to discourage isolation, receive support and provide valuable feedback to support the team’s core mission – to prevent individuals across the world from developing a medicine dependency.
Thanks, Chaya. I am sharing this post in my blog, juliemadblogger.com. I feel that this is especially important to people who choose not to see a doctor to do a taper.
There are some basic common-sense reasons for this. One is that seeing a professional who prescribes these pills invariably leads to having a psych diagnosis linger on your medical record. Secondly, many of us have experience trauma from being incarcerated or treated abusively by medical and psych professionals. This leads to a trauma-induced fear of pretty much anything medical! Understandably!
Thirdly, working independently of a medical professional or prescriber leads to increased decision-making ability and autonomy. Why should we continue to rely on “them” to run our lives for us, when they’ve already mucked things up?
This app sounds promising as a tracking tool. This might appeal to anyone who doesn’t want to use a notebook or might like the techo aspect of it. I am noticing also that smartphones are increasingly accessible to blind users or for those who might struggle to grasp a pencil (I can imagine TD sufferers might experience this).
Enjoy your summer.
Julie Greene
HI, I can’t find MediBee anywhere on the Apps or Google. Are they still around? My son is trying to taper off of Olanzapine after 3 weeks being on it at 10mgs
Why should we continue to rely on “them” to run our lives for us, when they’ve already mucked things up? rainbow obby
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