Psychiatric Drugs

Last year the British Medical Association (BMA) released a report on dependence and withdrawal from prescription drugs including benzodiazepines, z-drugs, opioids, and antidepressants. Now,...

Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz wrote, in a desperate, final email to his psychiatrist two weeks before slamming his A320 jet into the French Alps...

A new study found that children taking ADHD drugs had, on average, lower bone density than their peers. This included children on common stimulants...

Two recent court rulings argue that pharmaceutical companies have a first amendment right to market drugs “off-label” with a lack of scientific evidence, threatening...

Despite concerns about the risk to benefit ratio, the FDA approved flibanserin (Addyi) to treat low female sexual desire in August. In a new...

For a long time I have felt that there just isn’t a good enough and long enough study on the pros and cons of long-term antipsychotic treatment versus reduction and discontinuation in people who have psychotic disorders, including those who are classified as having schizophrenia. Moreover, there are increasing reasons to be worried about the effects of long-term treatment with antipsychotics. I put this case to the UK’s National Institute of Health Research recently, and proposed that they fund a trial to assess the long-term outcomes of a gradual programme of antipsychotic reduction compared with standard ‘maintenance treatment.’ The NIHR agreed that this was an important issue, and that a new trial was urgently needed. The RADAR (Research into Antipsychotic Discontinuation And Reduction) study officially started in January 2016.

“Health Commissioner Leana Wen will join other health directors across the country today in asking the federal government to require a ‘black box warning’...

A recent article in the American Journal of Public Health calls for policy level interventions to reduce the use of benzodiazepines, drugs commonly prescribed...

Vermont Governor Shumlin recently suggested a change to state law that would accelerate the process under which a person could be forced to take antipsychotic drugs against her will. The House Human Services Committee reviewed this proposal and I was asked to testify. What follows are my comments.

A new study tracks the approval of the latest antidepressant, vortioxetine, by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The...

On November 12th, 2015, the third anniversary of the day that I abruptly stopped taking benzodiazepines, my dear friend, J. Doe, published a two-part article here on Mad in America examining the language that is commonly used to describe benzodiazepine (benzo) iatrogenesis. I wanted a summary of these articles captured in a Youtube video so that those in the thick of benzo neurotoxicity could tune into these ideas in a way that might be more easily digestible. I hoped more benzo sufferers would begin to question how they describe (and allow others to describe) an illness that remains decades behind in understanding and recognition. I also wanted to draw attention to the content again in hopes that more medical professionals would read and understand the crucial distinctions in language surrounding this problem.

For Philly.com, staff writer Stacey Burling reports on the PolicyLab analysis of psychiatric drug use among Pennsylvania children on Medicaid.  “Many children in foster...

“The anguish, anxiety and nightmares were unbearable,” the former film executive Tod Abrams had wrote in a note to his family. “It was only...

A new study found that patients treated with the antipsychotic clozapine experienced gastrointestinal side-effects. “The study findings may help explain morbidity and mortality from...

Massachusetts Bill HD 4554 needs to gain sufficient state representative support by Tuesday, March 1, 2016. This bill will put restrictions on the prescribing of benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepine sleep aids, and will require that all patients be informed of the potential dangers of these drugs, specifically the dangers of long-term use.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports on legislation being passed in California to go after physicians who overprescribe psychiatric drugs to foster youth. The proposed legislation also targets government agencies that fail to offer nondrug alternative therapies to help foster youth recover from traumatic childhoods.

A recent review of the research found that benzodiazepine use may have long-term effects on memory and increase the risk for dementia. The study,...

“The drug industry spent $272,000 in campaign donations per member of Congress last year,” Martha Rosenberg writes for Alternet. As a result, Pharma is taking...

“The use of benzodiazepines, such as Xanax and Valium, is on the rise, and the number of overdose deaths related to them soared in...

A pathbreaking new study out of Finland suggests that early intervention programs for youth experiencing psychotic-like symptoms may see the greatest improvement when treatment works within the home rather than in a hospital setting. The research, to be published in next month’s issue of Psychiatry Research, found greater improvement in functioning, depression, and hopelessness among teens in a new need-adapted Family and Community oriented Integrative Treatment Model (FCTM) program.

“Children with attention-deficit problems improve faster when the first treatment they receive is behavioral therapy — like instruction in basic social skills — than...

Breitbart reports that dozens of NHS officials with the power to decide which drugs the agency uses are also being paid by Big Pharma....

“Decisions about the effectiveness of drugs are being made with incomplete information because results of almost three-quarters of clinical trials are still not published...

Accumulating evidence points to serious risks associated with antidepressant use during pregnancy, yet data suggests that prescriptions continue to rise in the US. "Given...