Psychiatric Drugs

US Congressman David Jolly has introduced a bill calling for studies on the link between veteran suicides and psychiatric drugs. The International Society for...

Researchers in Seattle found the worrying cocktail of over 81 drugs when testing water quality in nearby Puget Sound. They even found drugs in...

Brian Daniels writes in the Belfast Telegraph that the role of antidepressants in the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash needs to be investigated. “The safety...

The Massachusetts Benzo Bill H4062: Informed consent for benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepine hypnotics was just scheduled to be heard by the Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse on Monday, April 4th. Less than a week away! The committee will decide whether the bill moves forward to the house and senate, goes to study, or is denied.

A new study in JAMA Neurology finds that the use of antipsychotic drugs more than doubled the risk of death in patients with Parkinson’s...

Since the 1980s, antidepressant use has risen by at least four-hundred percent and obesity rates have climbed to include thirty percent of the population....

NBC News reports that the FDA is taking action in an attempt to make opioid drugs, cousins to opium and heroin, a last-ditch option...

As the benzodiazepine crisis spreads throughout the United States and other parts of the world, so does the debate within the benzo victim/survivor community. We know that it can be terribly invalidating to label and treat a person as a “drug addict” who is only physically dependent on benzos — and taking these drugs exactly as prescribed by a doctor. However, it can be equally invalidating to deny that “iatrogenic benzo dependence” intersects in multiple ways in the lives of people struggling with “addiction.” People will ALSO SUFFER when yanked off of their benzos, or forced into similar rapid tapers when a doctor becomes aware of their addiction history. 

On February 24th, 2016 Bill HD4554 - An Act relative to benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepine hypnotics was filed by Representative Paul McMurtry in the Massachusetts State House. The bill received 47 co-sponsors during the seven-day open period in which legislators can co-sponsor. This is an impressive and promising turnout.

Over the past two months, Ronald Pies and Allen Frances, in response to a post I had written, wrote several blogs that were meant to serve as an “evidence-based” defense of the long-term use of antipsychotics. As I read their pieces, I initially focused on that core argument they were presenting, but second time through, the aha moment arrived for me. Their blogs, when carefully parsed, make a compelling case that their profession, in their use of antipsychotics as a treatment for multiple psychotic disorders, has done great harm, and continues to do so today.

When I was born, everyone was expecting me to have arms. The doctor's mind raced; how am I going to tell this mother and the father that their son has hands but not arms? If he's missing so much in his extremities, mustn’t he also be missing a mind? My mom looked into my eyes and knew - in a way that only mothers know - that I had a mind, and spirit.

Canada's Global News reports that "A couple of years after a national initiative began to reduce the use of anti-psychotic medication, some people are...

Chicago Psychiatrist Michael Reinstein received a sentence of nine months in prison for taking an estimated $600,000 in kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies in exchange...

Eleanor Morgan writes in the Guardian opinions that the long waiting times for talk therapy and the increasing use of drugs in the UK...

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that, three years into an Australian study that is following 178 children with ADHD and 212 children without ADHD, the...

A study of 378,881 subjects aged 4-17 years by the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database found that the likelihood of receiving an ADHD diagnosis and treatment was...

The New York Times considers new research from Taiwan that suggests the possibility that the relative neurocognitive immaturity of younger children in a school cohort,...

A large study of the population in Taiwan reveals that long-term use of benzodiazepine drugs, commonly prescribed for anxiety, significantly increases the risk for brain, colorectal, and lung cancers. The research, published open-access in the journal Medicine, also identifies the types of benzodiazepines that carry the greatest cancer risk.

A Sydney, Australia law firm has launched a class action on behalf of people who as children and adolescents were prescribed Glaxosmithkline's drug Paroxetine. Despite...

A new study to be published in the next issue of Schizophrenia Research examines patients suffering from a first-episode of psychosis who stop taking any antipsychotic drugs. The researchers attempt to identify variables that can serve as predictors of the successful discontinuation of antipsychotics. They find, for example, that those who discontinue the drugs have, on average, the same outcomes as those who stay on them, and that those who have better social integration are more likely to discontinue without relapse.

BBC news conducts a video interview with a young man named George. He was prescribed antidepressants when he was 15, after only a five-minute...

Researchers from the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) found that antidepressants weaken bone growth which can disrupt procedures like tooth implants....

The New York Times reports that two major pharmaceutical companies may have mislead the editors of a prestigious medical journal in an effort to...

The drug watch blog Evidencer.org takes on Flibanserin (Addyi) the first drug claiming “to enhance women’s sexual drive…” Article →

Pfizer’s patents on Xanax, Zoloft, and Effexor have run out and generics are now coming to market. The company is also facing lawsuits from...