Depression
Classism in Disguise
by Chaya Grossberg
May 7, 2013
For everyone who goes on psychiatric drugs, the reason comes back to power imbalances in their personal life. Women who’s husbands “make all of the money” and have an unequal share of the power, kids who’s parents have power over them—frequently people who have less money and security, therefore less platform for authority than those around them. Mental illness is not in fact an illness but an unequal division of power and sense of security in a social group.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Community, Depression, Depression, Featured Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Trauma/Distress
Winners of the American Dream
by Alice Keys, M.D.
April 7, 2013
Since I left the psychiatric prescribing trenches and came south for the winter, I’ve been staying in a beach town within driving distance of a technology metropolis. I take breaks from my writing and walk to the beach. There, I meet and talk with the winners of the American dream. They are intelligent, highly educated and financially successful. They take their beach vacations here.
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Categorized in: ADHD, Anxiety, Blogs, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Featured Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: ADHD, Alice Keys MD, mental health, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric medication
Excessive Mood & Behavior Arousal in Juveniles Treated with Antidepressants
March 27, 2013
In a study of 6,767 reports of antidepressant trials in juveniles treated for depressive and anxiety disorders, the risk of psychopathological behavioral or mood elevation was 3.5x greater with antidepressants than with placebo. The authors (which include Giovanni Fava of the University of Bologna and Ross Baldessarini of Harvard Medical School) urge “particular caution and monitoring for potential risk of future bipolar disorder.”
Categorized in: Adult, Antidepressants, Anxiety, Bipolar, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, Psychiatric Drugs, Research
Hospital Stays for Juvenile Bipolar Jumped 434% from 1997 to 2010
March 20, 2013
A report from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project finds that hospital stays for a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children aged 5-9 increased 696% from 1997 to 2010, 475% in children aged 10-14, and 345% in those aged 15-17. By 2010, mood disorders had become the most frequent principal diagnosis in children aged 1-17.
Categorized in: Bipolar, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, In the News, Research
Whether Bullied or Bullying: Increased Psychiatric Disorders
March 15, 2013
A North Carolina study of 1,420 participants finds higher rates of agoraphobia (4.6x), generalized anxiety disorder (2.7x), and panic disorder (3.1x) among victims of bullying. Among those who had been both bullies and victims, the study found higher rates of depression (4.8x), panic disorder (14.5x), agoraphobia (26.7x) and suicidality (18.5x) in both childhood and young adulthood. Results appeared in JAMA Psychiatry.
Categorized in: Addiction, Adult, Anxiety, Anxiety, Childhood Adversity/Trauma, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, Non-Drug Approaches, Trauma/Distress, Violence
“Child Who Just Lost Balloon Begins Lifelong Battle With Depression” (The Onion)
March 7, 2013
The humor newspaper The Onion satirizes the conversion of transient human emotions into lifelong illnesses, reporting that “Shortly after losing grip of a helium-filled balloon and watching it float into the air above the San Diego Zoo Tuesday, local child Caleb Tremont, 3, reportedly began a battle with chronic depression that will last for the rest of his life.”
Categorized in: Antidepressants, Around The Web, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, Psychiatric Drugs
No Link Between Teen Depression and Violent Crime
February 20, 2013
Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, find little evidence that adolescent depression predicts violent crime.
Categorized in: Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, In the News, Violence
Robot Bullies Rats into Depression to Test Antidepressant Medication
February 19, 2013
Japanese engineers have devised a robotic rat that bullies laboratory rats into a state of depression, creating a model of human depression they deem suitable for testing antidepressants. The research, published this month in Advanced Robotics, reports that continuous attacks in young and intermittent attacks (in response to movement) in older rats is most effective.
Categorized in: Adult, Antidepressants, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, In the News, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychiatric Drugs, Trauma/Distress
The Putative Neurobiology of SSRIs and Aggression
October 9, 2012
“It’s happening,” said researchers at Northeastern University, “Kids are becoming irritated, aggressive, impulsive, agitated, hostile. So you ask the question: Why?” They found (through study of the effect of fluoxetine on hamsters) that SSRIs may “take the brake off” of aggression by allowing another neurotransmitter – vasopressin – to kick the brain’s aggression system into overdrive. “There’s the likelihood,” said a lead researcher, “that by virtue of the fact that our clinical diagnosis is not based in neurobiology, but rather in symptomology, that we may be giving kids a serotonin drug inappropriately.”
Categorized in: Antidepressants, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, In the News, Psychiatric Drugs
Depression as the Evolved Adaptation to Stress
October 2, 2012
Noting that more people die from suicide than car accidents in the U.S., and the majority of those suffer from depression, The Atlantic explores a theory put forth in a recent paper linking depression to immune system activation and associated behavioral responses. “The basic idea is that depression and the genes that promote it were very adaptive for helping people – especially young children – not die of infection in the ancestral environment,” the paper’s authors comment, by activating a set of protective behaviors – such as social withdrawal – in response to stressful events in the wild that may expose us to risk of infection.
Categorized in: Adult, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, In the News, Uncategorized
1 Boring Old Man Bores Even More Into Study 329′s Raw Data
August 23, 2012
1 Boring Old Man bores ever more deeply into the newly available raw data from GlaxoSmithKline’s study of Paxil in children, finding that “if this information had been available eleven years ago, all of this wouldn’t have happened. GSK, Sally Laden, and the guest authors couldn’t have published a study that said, “Paroxetine is generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents.” The only reason they could say that is because this raw data wasn’t available to the curious or the critics. The authors could twist it and turn it into something it wasn’t, because it couldn’t be checked.”
Categorized in: Antidepressants, Around The Web, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, Psychiatric Drugs, Uncategorized
“Grief is Good News for Pharmaceutical Companies”
August 14, 2012
The U.K.’s Guardian writes today that “the proposal by the American Psychiatric Association to create a new illness – prolonged grief disorder – and to redefine children’s mental health is the stuff of dreams for Big Pharma.”
Categorized in: Adult, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, DSM, In the News, Industry
Harvard Psychologist Critiques Psychiatry
August 7, 2012
Eminent developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan, in an interview with Spiegel, accuses the mental-health establishment and pharmaceutical companies of incorrectly classifying millions as mentally ill out of self-interest and greed. “That is the history of humanity: Those in authority believe they’re doing the right thing, and they harm those who have no power,” Kagan says.
Categorized in: ADHD, Anxiety, Bipolar, Childhood Adversity/Trauma, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, DSM, Featured News, In the News
Individualism a Risk Factor for Depression
July 11, 2012
Findings from a survey of 6,082 individuals, designed to explore racial and ethnic differences in mental disorders, reinforce the relationship between social support and depression. The authors suggest a re-examination of “the individualistic models of treatment that are most evaluated in the United States. The lack of evidence-based data on support groups, peer counseling, family therapy, or other social support interventions may reflect a majority-culture bias toward individualism, which belies the extensive body of research on social support deficits as a major risk factor for depression.” The study appears in Ethnicity & Disease.
Categorized in: Adult, Children and Adolescents, Community, Depression, Depression, Disorders, Featured News, In the News, Non-Drug Approaches, Research, Trauma/Distress
Have Antidepressants Made Kids Emotionally Illiterate?
June 30, 2012
An article in the Wall Street Journal today explores the phenomenon of children growing up on antidepressants.
Categorized in: Antidepressants, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, In the News, Industry, Psychiatric Drugs
Familial Factors Affect Depression, BD, OCD, PD, and Phobias
June 24, 2012
A study of 566 families with 1416 bipolar-disordered members, and 675 families with 1726 depressed members by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of Iowa, published in Psychological Medicine‘s July issue finds that the comorbidity of these disorders with OCD, panic disorder and specific phobia is “at least partly due to familial factors, which may be of relevance to both phenotypic and genetic studies of co-morbidity.”
Categorized in: Adult, Anxiety, Anxiety, Bipolar, Bipolar, Childhood Adversity/Trauma, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, Genetics, In the News, Non-Drug Approaches, Nuclear Genetics, Research, Trauma/Distress
Depressed People Surf Differently
June 16, 2012
In a study to be published in a forthcoming IEEE Technology and Society researchers at Missouri University recruited 216 undergraduates, finding that the 30% who met criteria for depression engaged in more file sharing (as for movies and music), gaming, chatting, and very high rate of e-mail usage. Frequent e-mail checking, the authors note, may relate to high levels of anxiety, which also correlates with depression. The study also found indications that depressive people switch between applications frequently in a manner consistent with a lack of concentration – also associated with depressive symptoms.
Categorized in: Adult, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, In the News, Research
Children Raised in Institutions: Increased ADHD, Anxiety, etc.
June 7, 2012
Data drawn from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project show that children raised in institutions in Romania exhibit elevated symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, depression, and disruptive behavior compared with controls. Researchers from Harvard, the University of Maryland and Tulane also found disrupted brainwave patterns consistent with with risk for psychopathology. Exposure to early life deprivation, the authors write, may contribute to abnormal patterns of neurodevelopment generated by adverse rearing environments. The study is available online from the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Categorized in: ADHD, Anxiety, Childhood Adversity/Trauma, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, In the News, Non-Drug Approaches, Research, Trauma/Distress
Psychotropic Drugs and Children
May 24, 2012
Psychotropic Drugs and Children
June 15, 2010
Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, discusses the disturbing effects of psychotropic drugs prescribed for children. Such medications, used for ADHD, depression, and anxiety, for example, have become commonplace over the past 30 years. This practice profoundly alters the lives of the children, and so now we, as a society, urgently need to address this question: do the medications help the children thrive and grow up into healthy adults? Or does this practice do more harm than good over the long term. Robert Whitaker emphasizes two things: first, the need for an objective, evidence-based approach to evaluating these drugs; and second, the need for better public understanding of how these medications work.
Categorized in: ADHD, Anxiety, Bipolar, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, DSM, Psychiatric Drugs, Stimulants, Videos
Psychotropics Contribute to Suicides Among Military Children
May 13, 2012
The Marine Corps Times writes of a dramatic increase in prescriptions of psychiatric medication for children of active-duty military personnell during their parents’ deployment and re-integration; a trend seen as contributing to a rise of suicides among military children. “The psychiatrist never once told me Celexa was a risk” said one parent, “I didn’t find out the seriousness until after he died.”
Categorized in: Antidepressants, Anxiety, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, In the News, Psychiatric Drugs
APA Proposes Alternative to Juvenile Bipolar
May 10, 2012
In response to pressure over the 40-fold increase of bipolar diagnoses in children, many of which are being reviewed and dropped in retrospect, the APA has proposed a new, potentially more transient “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder” that would apply to children with chronic irritability and recurrent temper outbursts, and would ostensibly be treated with antidepressants instead of antipsychotics. The proposal, according to the Boston Globe, has brought new scrutiny to Joseph Biederman, who argued that chronic irritability can be interpreted as juvenile mania.
Categorized in: Adult, Anxiety, Anxiety, Bipolar, Bipolar, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, In the News, Non-Drug Approaches, Trauma/Distress
Weak Field Trials Scuttle DSM-5 Diagnoses
May 8, 2012
“Mixed anxiety-depressive disorder,” “attenuated psychosis syndrome,” “obsessive-compulsive personality disorder,” “antisocial personality disorder,” and “nonsuicidal self-injury” were among diagnoses that met with disappointing results in field trials for the new DSM-5. Either low interrater reliability (a lack of sufficient agreement between clinicians), or a lack of sufficient examples of people with a proposed diagnosis in the real world meant that these diagnoses could not be included in this round of the APA’s official list of disorders. One architect of the trials said that a goal of the DSM-5 was to test diagnoses “with real clinicians and real patients,” a goal that may explain why even “major depressive disorder” was found to be surprisingly unreliable, possibly because the previous version of the DSM excluded patients with complicated “psychiatric comorbidities.”
Categorized in: Adult, Anxiety, Anxiety, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, DSM, Personality Disorders, Research, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders
DSM-5 Retreats from Some Controversial Diagnoses
May 4, 2012
The APA DSM-5 Development website announced today that “Psychosis Risk” and “Mixed Anxiety Depression” will not be included in the DSM-5 (apart from recommendations for further study), and added criteria to “clarify” the distinction between bereavement and major depressive disorder. Criteria for ADHD have also been tightened. The statement invites “Final Public Comment” through June 15th.
Categorized in: Adult, Antipsychotics, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Depression, Disorders, DSM, In the News, Psychiatric Drugs, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders
Fantasy Video Game Zaps Depression in Adolescents
April 23, 2012
SPARX, an interactive video game in which significantly depressed adolescents shoot down “GNATs” (Gloomy Negative Automatic Thoughts) in a quest to restore the balance in a fantasy world is as effective at reducing anxiety and depression than standard therapy. 187 adolescents at 24 primary healthcare sites in New Zealand either played SPARX or received treatment-as-usual over a period of four to seven weeks. At three-month follow-up remission rates were significantly higher in the SPARX arm (43.7%) than in treatment-as-usual (26.4%). “Around 80 percent of young people with depression never get treatment,” said lead author Sally N. Merry. “When you do the calculations of how many therapists you need to meet that need, it’s enormous.” Results are in the British Medical Journal.
Categorized in: Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, In the News, Mind/Body, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychotherapy, Recovery/Empowerment, Research
Blood Test for Depression Announced
April 20, 2012
Researchers testing the blood of 14 teenage subjects with major depressive disorder and 14 with no disorder for a set of candidate biomarkers from animal models of depression found that 11 of the 26 candidate markers differentiated depressed participants from controls. Results will appear in Translational Psychiatry.
Categorized in: Antidepressants, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Disorders, In the News, Psychiatric Drugs, Research
