Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress Public Health England has made on its pledge to review the use of the phrase discontinuation syndrome as a means of describing opioid dependence.
Public Health England (PHE) has not used the term ‘discontinuation syndrome’ to refer to opioid dependence. The term was used in the early stages of the Prescribed Medicines Review in relation to antidepressant medication as that was the only term recognised by some stakeholders at the time the review started.
PHE did agree to review the use of the term and has done so. It persists in some older review documents but is not being included in current documents. Information and documents on the review are published at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/prescribed-medicines-an-evidence-review