Psychiatric Drugs

In this video from CBC News, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee takes on “corruption of the scientific process.” "There will be commercial pressures, academic pressures,...

A new study, published in JAMA Neurology, found that older people who regularly took anticholinergic drugs, including certain cold medicines or antidepressants, had poorer...

Antidepressants have been reported to cause a state called “akathisia,” where people feel extremely agitated and restless and may become preoccupied with thoughts of...

The medication left me emotionally numb, making it impossible to connect with people or sense the aliveness of the world around me. But after two years on antidepressants, I found something that gave me jolt of feeling strong enough to wake me up for a moment. I then spent the next seven years giving myself daily doses of horror to induce an emotional reaction.

The Roanoke Times medical column takes on the question, “Can antidepressants lead to suicidal thoughts and actions?” concluding that “it is crucial for patients...

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently issued a controversial recommendation that all adolescent and adult patients undergo depression screening in primary care. The...

A new analysis of the information that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) publishes for parents about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) concludes that the children’s experiences and contexts are ignored and that medication is presented, misleadingly, as the only solution supported by research evidence.

Students from Harvard Medical School joined students from Tufts University to protest Joseph DiMasi, who recently published a study that the students claim is...

"During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military plied its servicemen with speed, steroids, and painkillers to help them handle extended combat,” Lukasz Kamienski writes...

Martha Rosenberg analyzes the “slick, Mad Men-style ads” that ran in medical journals from the 1950s-70s “in which women clearly ‘knew their place’ and...

A new study finds that prenatal exposure to antidepressant drugs, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, is associated with higher rates of...

New data reveals that the majority of care homes in British Columbia, Canada are giving out prescriptions for antidepressants and antipsychotics without a diagnosis....

The New York Post reprints an excerpt on antidepressants from the latest book by MIA contributor, Kelly Brogan, MD, “A Mind of Your Own:...

“Pharmaceutical industry influence can harm the social and moral character of medical students. In medicine, the traditional virtues of benevolence, compassion, integrity, respectfulness, honesty...

The hearing for Bill H4062: Informed Consent for Benzodiazepines and Non-benzodiazepine Hypnotics took place on Monday – in the middle of an April snowstorm! The discussion clarified some important points in the legislation and gave survivors an opportunity to tell their stories. I was so proud to be there and witness the courage, camaraderie, resilience, advocacy, and vulnerability of fellow survivors. This legislation is our chance to be heard. As one survivor said, through tears, to the committee, “Do not let my suffering be in vain. I beg you to pass this bill.”

A new study published in the journal Neuroscience finds that rats given regular doses of amphetamines during adolescence have brain and behavioral changes in adulthood....

“Adolescents whose mothers took certain antidepressants while pregnant with them are more than four times as likely to become depressed by age 15, compared with...

Researchers found that pediatricians vary greatly in how often they diagnose and prescribe drugs for ADHD and other mental health conditions. “The proportion of...

In an exchange published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, researchers take turns highlighting major problems in the way psychiatry is currently practiced in the United States. In response to an article by Vinay Prasad calling for an insistence on randomized control trials in “evidence-based” medicine, Jose de Leon, from the Mental Health Research Center at the University of Kentucky begins the back-and-forth by pointing out that this type of evidence has been detrimental to the field of mental health.

John Ioannidis claims that the idea of evidence based medicine has been “hijacked to serve agendas different from what it was originally aimed for,” in a newly published critical essay in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. Ioannidis frames the essay as a continuation of a conversation with David Sackett, widely considered the founder of evidence based medicine.

The FDA has received reports of over 544 suicides and 1,869 attempted suicides connected to the smoking cessation drug Chantix, according to a new...

Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, talks to AlterNet about his three-decade-long journey trying to shift social consciousness around...

A study of rats given regular, high doses of amphetamine finds that those exposed to the drug at an age corresponding to human adolescence...

“In 2003, Kim’s husband, Tim ("Woody") Witczak, sought help for insomnia. His doctor prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft. Five weeks later, Witczak's father found Woody...

As we have reported at MIA, new research indicates that Parkinson's disease patients who are given antipsychotics to treat dementia and psychosis may be...