U of Buffalo Studies Show Protective Effects of Maternal Love
From The Buffalow News: Even for children born to parents who used alcohol, cocaine or other drugs, a supportive, respectful primary caregiver lowered their future health and relationship risks.
The Door to a Revolution in Psychiatry Cracks Open
The Ministry of Health in Norway has ordered its four regional health authorities to offer medicine-free treatment in psychiatric hospitals. A six-bed ward in Tromso, which is in the far north of Norway, is now providing such care.
Psychiatrists Must Face Possibility That Medications Harm
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...
The Case Against Antipsychotics
This review of the scientific literature, stretching across six decades, makes the case that antipsychotics, over the long-term, do more harm than good. The drugs lower recovery rates and worsen functional outcomes over longer periods of time.
The Evidence-Based Mind of Psychiatry on Display
The writings of Pies and his colleagues, I believe, provide a compelling case study of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance arises when people are presented with information that creates conflicted psychological states, challenging some belief they hold dear, and people typically resolve dissonant states by sifting through information in ways that protect their self-esteem and their financial interests. It is easy to see that process operating here.
Me, Allen Frances, and Climbing Out of a Pigeonhole
Four weeks ago, after I wrote a blog about a study that concluded there was no good evidence that antipsychotics improved long-term outcomes for people diagnosed with schizophrenia, I was ccâd on an email that had been sent to a number of âthought leadersâ about what I had written. At least as I read the email, it put me into the usual pigeonhole for critics of psychiatric drugs: I apparently was globally âagainstâ medications, and I had displayed a type of simplistic âcategoricalâ thinking. All of this led to my having an email exchange with Allen Frances, and his laying out, in his opinion, the considerable "collateral damage" my writings had done.
Timberrr! Psychiatryâs Evidence Base For Antipsychotics Comes Crashing to the Ground
When I wrote Anatomy of an Epidemic, one of my foremost hopes was that it would prompt mainstream researchers to revisit the scientific literature. Was there evidence that any class of psychiatric medicationsâantipsychotics, antidepressants, stimulants, benzodiazepines, and so forthâprovided a long-term benefit? Now epidemiologists at Columbia University and City College of New York have reported that they have done such an investigation about antipsychotics, and their bottom-line finding can be summed up in this way: Psychiatryâs âevidence baseâ for long-term use of these drugs does not exist.
Researchers Test Harms and Benefits of Long Term Antipsychotic Use
Researchers from the City College of New York and Columbia University published a study this month testing the hypothesis that people diagnosed with schizophrenia treated long-term with antipsychotic drugs have worse outcomes than patients with no exposure to these drugs. They concluded that there is not a sufficient evidence base for the standard practice of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.
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Anatomy of an EpidemicÂ
"Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown 2010), by the journalist...