June 18, 2013

While a 2-year outcome study by Wunderink, et al. has been cited as evidence that guided discontinuation of antipsychotics for people whose psychosis has remitted results in twice as much “relapse,” a not-yet-published followup of that study, extending it to 7 years using a naturalistic followup, finds that the guided discontinuation group had twice the recovery rates, and no greater overall relapse rate (with a trend toward the medication group having more relapse.)
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Blogs, Featured Blogs, Recovery/Empowerment, Research, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, long term outcomes, Psychosis, Recovery, relapse, relapse rates, Schizophrenia

June 3, 2013

When children do things like recoil in fear from monsters and ghosts in their darkened bedroom at night, it’s easy to see the “out of touch with reality” aspect of their experience as being closely related to the faculty that gives them their ability to play – their imagination. We help children through such challenging experiences by being with them, and by playing together, doing things like creating scary images together and then figuring out how to cope with them or laugh at them. In the process we help them explore how to create a world view that works to at least some extent and has room for joy and originality – when their imagination helps them (and maybe others) see the world in new ways.
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Categorized in: Bipolar, Blogs, Community, Featured Blogs, Recovery/Empowerment, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders | Tagged as: anti-stigma campaigns, community, creativity, madness, play, Psychosis, stigma reduction

May 4, 2013

At the University of Minnesota, the answer is apparently $1,446. If harmless clerical errors were to blame for oddities like this, that fact should be easy to clarify simply by looking at the relevant documents.  But if there are systematic issues with the administration of clinical trials that makes it possible to bill for a visit with a dead subject, those issues would be important for other universities and private trial sites as well. 
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Research, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Suicide | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, billing, Dan Markingson, Quintiles, Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota

March 29, 2013

What is “healthy” spirituality and what supports it? Is it our human right to question our spiritual orientations, to experience transcendence and dark nights of the soul? Is it not normal to go through strange and transforming processes in our becoming who we are? Is it not our right to have significant questions about God or to get bold ideas and big feelings about the world and our place in it?
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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Children and Adolescents, Disorders, Featured Blogs, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

January 18, 2013

In the business of clinical trials, the most valuable commodities are the research subjects. Filling clinical trials is hard, and filling them quickly is even harder. That’s why in 2000 a clinical investigator told the HHS Office of the Inspector General that research sponsors were looking for three things from research sites: “No. 1—rapid enrollment. No. 2 — rapid enrollment. No. 3 — rapid enrollment.”
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Blogs, Featured Blogs, Industry, Research, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, CAFE study, clinical trials, Dan Markingson, Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota

January 12, 2013

Researchers from Duke University, the Dunedin (New Zealand) University School of Medicine, and the King’s College (London) Institute of Psychiatry find that in a study of 1037 children followed prospectively from birth to 38 years of age, “childhood psychotic symptoms were not specific to a diagnosis of schizophrenia in adulthood and thus future studies of early symptoms should be cautious in extrapolating findings only to this clinical disorder.” Results were published online January 12, 2013 by Psychological Medicine.

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Categorized in: Adult, Children and Adolescents, Disorders, Featured News, In the News, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

December 7, 2012

The recent research scandals out of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Psychiatry may be alarming, but they are not new. Back in the 1990s, when the university was working its way towards a crippling probation by the National Institutes of Health (for yet another episode of misconduct (this time in the Department of Surgery), the Department of Psychiatry hosted two spectacular cases of research wrongdoing, both of which resulted in faculty members being disqualified from conducting research by the FDA.
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Categorized in: Addiction, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Blogs, Featured Blogs, Industry, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Substance Abuse/Addiction, Suicide, Uncategorized | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, Barry Garfinkel, CAFE study, Charles Schulz, clinical trials, corruption, fraud, James Halikas, Psychosis, research misconduct, Schizophrenia, Stephen Olson, University of Minnesota

November 21, 2012

The suicide of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota has brought notoriety to the CAFÉ study and its site investigators, Stephen Olson and Charles Schulz. But the “corrective action” recently issued by the Minnesota Board of Social Work against the CAFÉ study coordinator, Jean Kenney, has raised another disturbing question.
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Blogs, Featured Blogs, Research, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Suicide | Tagged as: CAFE study, CATIE study, Dan Markingson, Jean Kenney, mental health, psychiatric medication, Schizophrenia, Stephen Olson, University of Minnesota

November 15, 2012

The suicide of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota has brought notoriety to the CAFÉ study and its site investigators, Stephen Olson and Charles Schulz. But the “corrective action” recently issued by the Minnesota Board of Social Work against the CAFÉ study coordinator, Jean Kenney, has raised another disturbing question.
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Blogs, Featured Blogs, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Suicide | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, CAFE study, clinical trials, Dan Markingson, Jean Kenney, Schizophrenia, Seroquel, University of Minnesota

May 23, 2012

A sample of 276 youth recruited from 2 juvenile detention centers found that the association between trauma exposure and callous-unemotional traits was mediated by the general numbing of emotions. Results appeared online May 21, 2012 in the Journal of Traumatic Stress.

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Categorized in: Children and Adolescents, Disorders, In the News, Non-Drug Approaches, Research, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Trauma/Distress

April 10, 2012

Article Abstract:
Although research supports the stigma and labeling perspective, empirical evidence also indicates that a social safety net remains intact for those with mental illness, recalling the classic “sick role” concept. Here, insights from social networks theory are offered as explanation for these discrepant findings. Using data from individuals experiencing their first contact with the mental health treatment system, the effects of diagnosis and symptoms on social networks and stigma experiences are examined. The findings suggest that relative to those with less severe affective disorders, individuals with severe diagnoses and more visible symptoms of mental illness have larger, more broadly functional networks, as well as more supporters who are aware of and sympathetic toward the illness situation. However, those with more severe diagnoses are also vulnerable to rejection and discrimination by acquaintances and strangers. These findings suggest that being formally labeled with a mental illness may present a paradox, simultaneously initiating beneficial social processes within core networks and detrimental ones among peripheral ties.

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Categorized in: ADHD, Adult, Anxiety, Anxiety, Autism, Bipolar, Bipolar, Childhood Adversity/Trauma, Children and Adolescents, Community, Dementia, Depression, Depression, Disorders, Hearing Voices, Non-Drug Approaches, Personality Disorders, Recovery/Empowerment, Research, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

March 10, 2012

Federal prosecutors have rejected as insufficient the $1 billion settlement reached two months ago between Johnson & Johnson and prosecutors in Philadelphia to resolve claims related to fraudulent and unapproved marketing of Risperdal for, among other things, children and the elderly.

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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Bipolar, Children and Adolescents, Dementia, Disorders, In the News, Industry, Psychiatric Drugs, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

March 8, 2012

During the 1990s, researchers using MRI technology discovered that antipsychotics shrink the frontal lobes and cause an enlargement of the basal ganglia. In the “Follow-up Magnetic Resonance Imaging” study, researchers reported that the enlargement of the basal ganglia was associated with a worsening of both the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. This was powerful evidence of how the drugs cause chronic illness over time.

a) Increase in Caudate Nuclei Volumes of First-Episode Schizophrenia Patients Taking Antipsychotic Drugs.Chakos, M. American Journal of Psychiatry 151 (1994):1430-1436.

b) Neuroleptics in Progressive Structural Brain Abnormalities in Psychiatric Illness. Madsen, A. The Lancet 32 (1998):784-785.

c) Subcortical Volumes in Neuroleptic Naive and Treated Patients With Schizophrenia.Gur, R. American Journal of Psychiatry 155 (1998):1711-1717.

d) A Followup Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Schizophrenia.Gur, R. Archives of General Psychiatry 55 (1998):145-152.

Categorized in: Adult, Antipsychotics, Disorders, Psychiatric Drugs, Research, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

February 9, 2012

Researchers in Brazil find, in a meta-analysis, that only 30% of youth deemed to be of ultra high risk of psychosis do in fact become psychotic, with 30% recovering. While a high level of positive symptoms and low social functioning was predictive of psychosis, high social functioning and low negative symptoms were predictive of recovery. Use of antipsychotics, at the level of multivariate analysis, was not predictive of outcome.
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Children and Adolescents, Disorders, In the News, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders