Our advisors

MD, PhD, Child and Adult Psychiatry

Dr. Debiec, a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist. He has 30 years of experience in comprehensive psychiatric care, various therapy modalities and advanced psychopharmacology, including prescribing and deprescribing. 

Dr. Debiec completed a postdoctoral fellowship in affective neuroscience as a Fulbright Scholar. He has conducted NIH-funded research and published in top scientific journals.

As an attending psychiatrist and assistant professor, from 2012 to 2023, Dr. Debiec worked in the Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Section and Women & Infants Mental Health Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He recently established a private practice in Ann Arbor, offering his expertise in anxiety disorders, climate grief and anxiety, trauma, PTSD, dissociative disorders, depression, OCD, sleep problems, attachment problems, autism, ADHD, parenting problems, and school-related emotional and behavioral problems.

DO, General Psychiatry

Dr. Giordano is a psychiatrist specializing in the safe, patient‑led deprescribing of psychotropic medications. Since 2020, she has guided hundreds of patients through hyperbolic tapers, addressing critical gaps left by standard psychiatry. As the founder of True You Psychiatry, a virtual telemedicine practice, she provides holistic, individualized care grounded in mutual trust and respect. Dr. Giordano brings to the advisory board deep clinical experience in tapering and withdrawal management, along with a commitment to empowering patients and advancing harm‑reduction from psychotropic medications.

MBBS, PhD, Neuroscience research

Dr Mark Horowitz MBBS PhD is is the founder of the Psychiatric Drug Deprescribing Clinic at North East London NHS Foundation Trust, Clinical Research Fellow in Psychiatry at North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT), Visiting Lecturer at King’s College London, an Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at University College London, and co-founder of Outro Health, a medical deprescribing service. 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.

His own difficulty of coming off psychiatric medications has informed much of his work. He has an interest in rational psychopharmacology and deprescribing psychiatric medication. He is the lead author of the 2024 Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines and is an associate editor of the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology.

He has written several papers about safe approaches to tapering psychiatric medications including publications in The Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry and Schizophrenia Bulletin. He co-authored the recent Royal College of Psychiatry guidance on ‘Stopping Antidepressants’, and his work informed the recent NICE guidelines on safe tapering of psychiatric medications, including antidepressants, benzodiazepines and z-drugs. He has been commissioned by Health Education England to prepare a teaching module on how to safely stop antidepressants.

MD, General Psychiatry 

Murray Kapell has board certifications in general psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and addiction medicine. After two decades of practice in hospital, municipal, and community mental health settings, he has made a commitment to psychiatric harm reduction. Continuously learning from, and appreciative for the people who have developed and graciously shared their own tapering methods, he has a deprescribing practice in Madison, Wisconsin and sees patients virtually throughout the midwest. www.reworkingpsychiatry.com

MD, General Psychiatry 

A board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. Shapiro is a clinical professor at UC Irvine Medical Center specializing in psychopharmacology and psychiatric drug withdrawal, having published more than 20 articles with an emphasis on antidepressant withdrawal in peer-reviewed journals.

As a clinician, Dr. Shapiro leads the consultation-liaison service and provides adult outpatient care. He is Director of Psychopharmacology for UC Irvine’s Primary Care Psychiatry Fellowship Program, training UC Irvine’s psychiatry residents in psychopharmacology.

He also founded Psychopharmacology OnDemand, LLC, to provide consultation for providers managing psychiatric medications across the United States, and is the Medical Director for Outro Health, a telemedicine pioneer in helping patients taper psychotropics.

MD, Community Psychiatry

Sandra Steingard, M.D. is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. She is editor-in-chief of Community Mental Health Journal, a member of the board of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists, and both editor of and contributor to the book, Critical Psychiatry: Controversies and Clinical Implications published by Springer in 2019. In 2020, she retired as Chief Medical Officer, Howard Center, Burlington, Vermont. She currently works in a variety of settings in the public sector of Vermont’s mental health care system.