Antipsychotics

I am quarantined in Stabilization. In front of me an old woman with cherry lipstick and a clipboard asks questions about sexual abuse, but my mind is through the square window on the door behind her. In that room I see a steel bed surrounded by emptiness. On top of it lay leather straps that are uneven in width where they’re wearing thin. Each strap has a set of holes to fasten the buckles tight, and I can see quite clearly that the ones nearest the end are circles while the ones furthest away have stretched into ovals. Tonight will be a Haldol night.

Internal Eli Lilly records about the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa have been added to the University of California's online, publicly accessible Drug Industry Documents Archive...

"Illinois medical regulators have indefinitely suspended the medical license of psychiatrist Michael Reinstein, who prescribed more of the most powerful and riskiest antipsychotic drug...

Use of second-generation antipsychotics (SGA) alongside other medications is growing rapidly among youth who are less impaired, according to a study published online in...

In a follow-up to an earlier commentary on the topic, Paula Span discusses the widespread use and negative effects of sleeping pills among the...

Taking the antipsychotic medication risperidone significantly increases men's chances of developing gynecomastia, or breast enlargement, according to a study by University of British Columbia...

Britain's National Health Service is adopting a "lifestyle medicine program" that was developed in Australia for young people taking antipsychotics, according to The Guardian....

Finnish reseachers report in Schizophrenia Research that antipsychotic use is associated with cognitive and memory impairments. The University of Oulu team studied forty people...

People diagnosed with schizophrenia experience reductions in brain volume that increase over time, and the amount of those reductions increases in proportion to the...

New Zealand and Chinese investigators believe they have clarified the mechanisms by which second generation antipsychotics cause serious "derangements" in glucose metabolism in the...

A California nursing home has settled with AARP in an unprecedented class-action lawsuit against the facility for using inappropriate kinds and amounts of psychiatric...

In an upcoming study in Psychiatric Services, US and Canadian researchers report that the strongest predictors for over-medicating of people being treated for schizophrenia...

“Live, healthy babies are the most common outcome following the use of antipsychotic medication in pregnancy,” conclude Australian researchers in a study that was...

My mother was once a bright, creative, beautiful young woman, a promising artist and a poet, who was captivated by the hippie movement. She was a creative bohemian artist, defying the conventions of our middle-class Jewish Midwestern family, which had carried a tradition of holding emotions inside and acting stoic. One day, soon after my grandparents’ divorce, she left. She hitched a ride to California, and from that point on, was never the same. The police picked her up on a park bench in Arizona, and she was committed for the first time at age 18. She rotated in and out of mental hospitals, the streets, and jail until her death.

The alleged “Prom day” killer, Christopher Plaskon, is a snap shot of the future result of Connecticut’s increased mental health services. The 17 year-old's defense apparently will be that his “mental health” caused his murderous actions – not the dangerous psychiatric drugs he obviously has been taking for some time.

KMSP News has aired a report of yet another mentally ill man pressured to enroll in a study of an unapproved antipsychotic drug, with near-disastrous results. His story bears a striking resemblance to the case of Dan Markingson, who committed suicide in a University of Minnesota study in 2004.

Professor Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics blasts the Board of Regents for ignoring psychiatric research abuse.

Twenty-five years ago, I organized a Mother’s Day Protest demonstration at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in NYC. We were 12 mothers and one male. The highlight of that APA meeting was the launching of Clozapine, the first of the so-called atypical neuroleptic drugs, which the APA promoted as a “scientific breakthrough treatment for schizophrenia.” Those atypical neuroleptics proved to be weapons of destruction.

My name is Leah Harris and I'm a survivor. I am a survivor of psychiatric abuse and trauma. My parents died largely as a result of terrible psychiatric practice. Psychiatric practice that took them when they were young adults and struggling with experiences they didn’t understand. Experiences that were labeled as schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. My parents were turned from people into permanent patients. They suffered the indignities of forced treatment. Seclusion and restraint. Forced electroshock. Involuntary outpatient commitment. And a shocking amount of disabling heavy-duty psychiatric drugs. And they died young, from a combination of the toxic effects of overmedication, and broken spirits.

Analysis of a survey of 104 provider organizations - representing 3,250 service users in September of 2013 - finds that over two-thirds of British...

"For the past eight years, Vicki Dyer has been the program director of the dementia ward at Lakewood, a continuing care centre in Waterville, Me.,...

Nathaniel Ayers, the violin-playing subject of the 2009 film "The Soloist," continues to fight against efforts to compel him to take antipsychotic medication.  "....

The Telegraph provides a forum for Joanna Moncrieff: "The use of antidepressants continues its inexorable rise. Since the early 1990s the number of prescriptions...

The death toll among Japanese citizens who have taken Johnson & Johnson's subsidiary Janssen's schizophrenia drug Xeplion has climbed to 21, from 17 on...

"Looking back, Pam Herrera wishes she had asked more questions and been more forceful with her son's therapists," says the Denver Post. "The list...