Adverse Effects

The New York Times reports that a growing number of infants and toddlers are being prescribed dangerous psychiatric drugs. “Almost 20,000 prescriptions for risperidone (commonly known as Risperdal), quetiapine (Seroquel) and other antipsychotic medications were written in 2014 for children 2 and younger, a 50 percent jump from 13,000 just one year before.”

Allen Frances and David Healy have expressed differing opinions on A Prescription for Murder, BBC Panorama's recent documentary on the association between antidepressants and violence. While...

Behind the U.S. task force recommendation to screen all children and adults for depression.

In the past six years, I have had the opportunity to speak at several conferences or meetings that I felt had particular potential to stir some political activity that would challenge current psychiatric practices, and one of those events was the meeting convened in the U.K.’s Parliament on May 11th, which had this title for the day: Rising Prescriptions, Rising Mental Health Disability: Is There a Link?

The Anything But the Company Drug playbook involved digging deep into the medical records of the person reporting a problem in order to find the ingrown toenail at the age of two that was possibly the cause. And of course if something else was possibly the cause, then we can’t conclude that our drug did it.

From Scientific American: Recent studies confirm the thesis of Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic - although prescriptions for psychiatric drugs continue to increase, mental health...

If doctors follow UK government guidelines, they could endanger patients who have both depression and any of a number of other common diseases or conditions.

-The debate on drug harms lands in the pages of the British Medical Journal and The Guardian.

Common second-generation antipsychotic medications are causing symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder to emerge in many people who previously only had schizophrenia symptoms, according to a...

The studies that the FDA relied upon for adults over age 24 were dismally flawed and untrustworthy compared to the ones used for children. The child studies showed that antidepressants can cause suicidality — the adult studies showed nothing other than FDA collusion with drug companies.

The Wall Street Journal highlights a new study that found that off-label medications represent about 12% of drug prescriptions and are resulting in negative...

In this video for NowThis, Yana Jacobs critiques the mental health industry standard of prescribing drugs as the first-line treatment for "mental illness." She emphasizes...

Members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Psychiatry Products division go on the defensive in a new article, responding to concerns about the agency’s approval of digital aripiprazole.

Depressed pregnant women need good care.  They should not be made to feel guilty for the choices they make concerning their depression or lectured to by those who don’t understand the area or lack compassion for them.  In that sense, Andrew Solomon does the public a service by turning his attention and writing talents to the topic of depression and pregnancy this week in the New York Times.  However, a crucial part of providing good care to depressed pregnant women is to give them accurate information on the topic.  In this sense, Andrew Solomon falls short.

From the Center for Health Journalism: It is a commonly held belief that more medical care is always better; however, overtreatment can be harmful to...

A new film, "Cause of Death: Unknown" investigates the pharmaceutical industry and the deaths that have been caused by psychiatric drugs. The film will...

When Carina Håkansson sent out an invitation for a symposium on "Pharmaceuticals: Risks and Alternatives," some of the world's top scientists, along with experts-by-experience, came from 13 countries to explore better ways to respond to people in crisis.

A recent study published in Schizophrenia Research examines the incidence individuals deemed “Ultra High-Risk” (UHR) for psychosis and their neighborhood of residence

The primary factor protecting psychiatry’s unwarranted power and authority is that it is perceived as shielding society from folks who are believed to be dangerous. It would seem, then, that one logical step toward reducing society’s trust in biological psychiatry would be to reveal the evidence of a significant correlation between the use of prescribed psychoactive drugs and the commission of violent acts against oneself or others.

Antipsychotics are being prescribed to people who may have challenging behaviors but no mental disorder, according to new research published in this month’s issue of BMJ. “Excessive use of psychotropic drugs has individual and systemic implications,” the researchers write. “Antipsychotics, in particular, are associated with several adverse side effects that can impair quality of life and lead to deleterious health outcomes.”

Researchers reveal the limitations and misleading interpretations of two recent studies that claim to demonstrate that long-term antipsychotic use leads to better outcomes.

Important assessment tool found to underestimate the risk for fracture in patients on psychiatric medication.

When Wilda White recovered from a manic episode triggered by her ADHD medication, she had lost her relationship, her home, and her dream job as a public interest lawyer. She reached a turning point when, she told Seven Days newspaper, "in the course of trying to figure out what had happened to me, I went on the website Mad in America.” Through the site, she connected with a job listing from Vermont Psychiatric Survivors, a non-profit dedicated to empowering and protecting the rights of people labeled “mentally ill.” She is now their executive director.

In a new article for Scientific American, Diana Kwon reports on how the true risks for suicide and aggression in children and teens taking...

A study demonstrates a 7% reduction in suicide attempts for teens in states that had legalized same-sex marriage.