Around The Web

At CounterPunch, Joseph Natoli connects Big Pharma, mass shootings, and rampant inequality. He writes: “The Brave New World soma strategy to deal with a population that, were they not doped up, might violently disrupt that brave new world, is useful if a society is ‘creatively destroying’ a growing number of its population each day. While the poor have daily evidence of their poverty, a collapsing middle class live in the illusion that they are middle class and just a short distance, not from ruin, but from fame and fortune. They are, in short, heading for a catastrophic break-down. Big Pharma is already set to give us all a ‘soft landing.’”

Dr. Mickey Nardo adds to the ongoing discussion about the RAISE study results. He writes: “If there is ‘spin’ in the reporting of this study, we need to know about it. I personally think that it’s more important for RAISE to be reported completely and honestly than whether it comes out like they [or I] want it to come out. We don’t need some sanitized version of RAISE to tell us we need to turn our attention to a full bodied approach to the treatment of First Episode psychotic patients. We all already know that. What we do need is to have our confidence restored in our research community – that they will honestly and clearly report their findings whether they are clean as a whistle or an unholy mess.”

Neuroskeptic weighs in on the controversy over the lack of antipsychotic dose data in the RAISE study and the misleading media coverage. He points out that one of the treatment interventions was a computerized medication management system called COMPASS, which recommends doctors use lower doses than they otherwise might.

In a bellwether case, plaintiffs allege that Pfizer did not adequately warn patients that Zoloft (sertraline) would cause birth defects. The case is scheduled in Federal Court in March, and the verdict will have significant implications for future suits.

PsychCentral presents a new study from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that found that foster care children are three times more likely than other children on Medicaid to receive a diagnosis of ADHD. Overall, more than one in four children in foster care receive such a diagnosis. CDC statistician Melissa Danielson interpreted these results as revealing a “substantial need” for more medical and behavioral services for kids in foster care.

The UK Times reports that pharmaceutical companies are actively lobbying to limit the release of clinical trial data to the public. Rather than limiting results and data to medical journals, new transparency initiatives are pushing for making the information publically available. The push for transparency comes in the wake of the reanalysis of the Study 329 data on paroxetine (marketed as Seroxat and Paxil), which found that the industry study had misconstrued its results.

Existential therapist and writer, Jason Dias, claims that there is something deeper and more pervasive than guns, drugs, or mental illness at the bottom of the United States’ mass shooting problem. On aNewDomain he writes: “We have to acknowledge that people who are despairing right now, they’re the sane ones, the normal ones. It makes sense to despair when you’re looked down on, tormented, bullied. When you feel different and you’re alienated. When your culture is alienated. When violence is glorified not by movies and games and television, but by the government, by the news. When violence is fetishized by political parties.”

Last Wednesday, Sesame Street added a new character, Julia, to its roster of characters. In an online story, Julia, who has autism, meets Elmo and Abby and Elmo explains why Julia might sometimes do things a little bit differently. The story was written by Leslie Kimmerman, who has a child with autism, and the entire series will be developed in collaboration with parents, advocates, and people with autism.

Over at CounterPunch, Carl Boggs takes on the knee-jerk mental illness response that pervades the airwaves after every mass shooting. He writes: “What the mental-health fixation lacks is any semblance of historical or social context. Given the persistence of U.S. imperialism and militarism — and mounting fascination with combat and guns in a society transfigured by its warfare state — Washington remains a thriving center of global violence: repeated armed interventions abroad have found their domestic parallel in the world’s largest prison system, a deepening gun culture, home-bred terrorism, police atrocities, and a media culture filled with spectacles of warfare and bloodshed.”

Minn Post did a feature story last week on Vail Place, an alternative mental health treatment center run on a community “clubhouse” model where the nearly 900 members and staff work side by side to run the center’s activities. Vail Place was founded in Hopkins, Minnesota in the early eighties by mental health activists and family members as a community for psychosocial rehabilitation. “The work isn’t therapy,” a member explains. “It’s growth. It’s ‘I cans’ rather than ‘I can'ts.’ And that’s important for mental health and survival.”

Writing on his critical psychiatry blog, Duncan Double critiques Joe Herbert’s piece on “Why can't we treat mental illness by fixing the brain?” in Aeon. While Herbert admits that there is a "mysterious and seemingly unfathomable gap" between psychology and neuroscience, which "bedevils not only psychiatry, but all attempts to understand the meaning of humanity,” he goes on to speculate that someday psychiatrists will be able to relate symptoms to brain activity.

The Boston Globe highlights a new book, “In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis,” by Casey Schwartz, which explores the importance on psychoanalysis in the age of neuroscience. The author explains that the psychoanalytic approach offers “an absolutely incomparable depth and attention to the specifics of each individual person and their reality. This is exactly what’s disappearing in neuroscience: the quirks, the particularities, the subtleties of the individual.”

This week the drug monitoring and patients' rights website, RxISK, launched the Centre for Medication Withdrawal, a page dedicated to establishing what causes dependence and how to treat it.

Writing for the conservative website The New American, C. Mitchell Shaw reports that more and more evidence is pointing to psychiatric drugs as a potential cause of mass shootings. “Of course anecdotes are not proof, and most people who regularly take antidepressants do so without becoming violent,” but, he adds, it appears “that young people are particularly at risk of developing violent tendencies, suicidal tendencies, or both while taking these drugs.”

Writing on his 1 Boring Old Man blog, Dr. Mickey Nardo reflects on the media frenzy around the RAISE study and asks why the prescription data has not been released. He adds skepticism about the political motives of the potentially overblown results, which he sees as a clear push for increased mental health funding.

ITV features and article and video today about the widespread problem of addiction and withdrawal from benzodiazepine drugs used to treat anxiety, including Ativan, Librium, Diazepam and Temazepam. Mother of three Sandra Minshull shares her story and discusses how Ativan “robbed her of her life.”

“Genetic explanations for violent crimes may encourage jurors to support an insanity defense, but jurors may also believe the defendant is a persistent threat who will commit more crimes in the future,” Science Daily reports. A study on over 600 participants found that when people read a genetic explanation for a violent murder they attributed less blame to the defendant but recommended a longer sentence.

The Scientific American reports on a new analysis of antidepressant trials revealing that the vast majority of meta-analyses have industry links and suppress negative results.

On her blog, A Disordered World, psychiatric survivor Jeanene Harlick writes that “prejudicial rhetoric about the mentally ill, following mass shootings, is exacerbating the already-overwhelming stigma, discrimination and oppression we experience as an unrecognized and disadvantaged minority group.”

The Society for International Psychology, Division 52 of the American Psychological Association, will host a webinar entitled “The Humanistic, Vigorous and Universal Approach of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.”

The American Psychological Association is hosting a two and half day interdisciplinary summit on November 3rd through 5th entitled Global Approaches to Integrated Care: Translating Science And Best Practices Into Patient-Centered Health Care Delivery. The summit features presentations and discussions on social determinants of health, demographics, culture and health disparities, and patients’ perspectives, among others. It can be livestreamed here.

Based on the Finnish Open Dialogue approach, the Parachute program is an alternative to current health care systems where a team of health care workers collaborate with families and those in distress to develop a path to recovery. The success of Parachute is now spurring the development of similar programs in the UK.

Despite concerns about the drug’s necessity, effectiveness, and side-effects, Flibanserin (Addyi) has come to market as the first drug designed to increase sexual desire in women

Johnson & Johnson is exposed to personal injury and product liability lawsuits over the failure to warn about Risperdal gynecomastia side effects in boys.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Caroline Beaton looks into how drugs continue to make billions in sales even after they lose lawsuits for fraud and misconduct. “The persistence of Big Pharma's fraud despite ubiquitous legal action suggests that our present efforts to hold the industry accountable are ineffective,” Beaton writes. “New polices in motion will make potentially unsafe drugs even easier to bring to market and promote.”