Around The Web

Nunavut, Canada’s largest and northernmost territory, is suffering from a suicide rate that is 10 times the national average. “In the case of Inuit boys 15 to 19,” CBC News reports, “the suicide rate is 40 times higher than those of their peers in the rest of Canada.”

The Psychiatric Advisor reports on new research from King’s College London that suggests that antipsychotics can cause serious harm to people with Parkinson’s.

Writing in The Atlantic, James Hamblin reports that research continues to show that physical exercise is integral to “childhood cognition and brain health,” especially for children who exhibit symptoms associated with ADHD. These findings, Hamblin comments, have been discussed with a “phenomenal degree of reservation compared to the haste with which millions of kids have been introduced to amphetamines and other stimulants to address said ADHD.”

NPR reports on how ketamine is being used off-label to treat depression.

After the 2009 suicide of a seven-year-old foster kid who had been on two “black box” medications intended for adults, Florida updated its policies to protect vulnerable children from over-prescription. Unfortunately, according to a report by Orlando Weekly, “foster children are still being put on psychotropic medications without caregivers following proper procedures.”

Seeing others in pain may engage some of the same neural pathways as experiencing pain yourself, according to a new study covered by ScienceNow.

An article for the Los Angeles Times, entitled “His 83-year-old Wife jumped to her death from a Kaiser clinic- why?” tells the story of Barbara Ragan who stepped off a roof in front of her mental health clinic with traces of Xanax, Prozac and an antidepressant in her blood.

The University of Minnesota announced a change to its research ethics policies this month after coming under criticism “following the recruitment of a schizophrenia...

In an Op-ed for the Times Union, Madeleine Ringwald explains how the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act “would severely disable protection and advocacy organizations from protecting the civil, legal and human rights of people in mental health services.” “Whether you examine it through a scientific, civil rights or bottom-line lens, Murphy's bill should appall you,” she writes. “Any legislation that bolsters institutionalization at the cost of community-based services seeks not to help those with mental health needs, but help society find ways to hide, suppress and silence them.”

In the Atlantic, Cari Romm describes “what it is like to earn a living as a research subject in clinical trials.” “Phase 1 trials are almost always where the money is,” she writes, but they are “also the least regulated” and “companies aren’t legally required to register a trial with Clinicaltrials.gov.” “It seems to me like if you were considering signing up for one of these things, you would at least want to know the data that’s out there about [safety],” said Carl Elliott, an author for MIA and expert on the ethics of human subject research.

Lynne Malcolm, for ABC’s All In the Mind program, interviews three psychoanalysts about how their field remains “relevant and useful in the contemporary therapeutic...

On September 18th the one day "More Harm than Good Conference" brought together many of the leaders of the critical psychiatry movement. While the event has passed, the video and slides from the conference have been made available on the council for evidence-based psychiatry website.

Writing for Mashable, Stephan Bevan- the director of the Centre for Workforce Effectiveness- explains how an increase in poor quality, precarious, and temporary jobs “threatens our productivity and competitiveness, levels of social inclusion and, ultimately, the health of the workforce.”

Bloomberg reports that the FDA asked Pfizer in August “to modify safety warnings for its antidepressant Zoloft (sertraline) and acknowledge for the first time that some studies linked the mood-altering medication to heart defects in newborns.”

On his own website, clinical psychologist Kenneth Pope has summarized 60 meta-analyses of antidepressants published between 2013-2015. The studies contain information on antidepressants “uses,...

Writing for the Atlantic, David Dobbs examines how much harm has been done in the 14 years since Paxil was wrongly determined to be safe and effective. “Study 329, as it became known, helped spur a huge increase in Paxil prescriptions,” Dobbs writes. “In 2002 alone, over 2 million prescriptions were written for children and teens, and many more for adults.” “Thousands of children, teens, and young adults attempted or committed suicide while on Paxil,” and the reanalysis of Study 329 in BMJ makes it seem “more likely than ever” that many did because of the drug.

On Sunday, the front page of the UK’s Independent ran a story entitled, “Thousands of children are being medicated for ADHD – when the condition may not even exist.” Fiction novelist and author of the upcoming “Concentr8,” William Sutcliffe, writes, “The pharmaceutical/medical industry teaches us that whatever the problem, a pill is the answer.” “This notion is becoming so all-powerful, and so locked together with a pressurised, exam-centred, conformist educational system, that every parent who has a misbehaving or inattentive child may now find themselves pushed towards a diagnosis of ADHD.”

In Saturday’s New York Times, Sabrina Tavernise describes the close industry ties of Dr. Robert Califf, a cardiologist and researcher recently tapped by the Obama administration to head the FDA. In a conflict of interest statement published last year, Califf “declared financial support from more than 20 companies,” leading some public health advocates to “question whether his background could tilt him in the direction of an industry he would be in charge of supervising.” Tavernise points to a presentation Califf gave on “Disrupting Clinical Research: Transforming a System” in 2014 where he singled out regulation as a barrier to research and innovation. “I think it illuminates his thinking,” Daniel Carpenter, a Harvard professor who studies the FDA, said of the slide. “In a sense, he’s the ultimate industry insider.”

Newly elected UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has appointed Luciana Berger to his shadow cabinet as the “Minister for Mental Health,” a new position that has no counterpart in the Conservative government. The Independent reports that Corbyn has devoted considerable attention to mental health issues.

In a major story, the New York Times presents the re-analysis by David Healy, Jon Jureidini, Mickey Nardo and others of Study 329, published in...

Huffington Post and journalist Steve Brill have combined to launch a 15 part series about how Johnson & Johnson illegally violated FDA restrictions by pushing the antipsychotic drug, Risperdal, for use with adolescents and the elderly. The series, entitled “America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker,” launched yesterday and will include mixed media, videos, podcasts, source documents, as well as 15 written chapters. Click more for a synopsis of part 1.

Writing for the UK’s Daily Mail, Peter Gøtzsche introduces his new book “Deadly Psychiatry And Organised Denial.” “More than 80 million prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are written in the UK every year, Gøtzsche writes. “Not only are these drugs often entirely unnecessary and ineffective, but they can also turn patients into addicts, cause crippling side-effects - and kill.”

Last Thursday, the FDA agreed to review a “digital pill,” combining a sensor with the antipsychotic Abilify, in order to track patients’ compliance with drug treatment. Patients taking the tracker pill would also wear a patch, which would receive information and relay it to a mobile device, according to a brief report by BioPharmaDIVE.

Thirty-three percent of all inmates in New Mexico are taking at least one psychotropic drug. The rate is up from 25% in 2013, according to a report by The Santa Fe New Mexican. While the prescription rate at the federal level is 10%, 30% of male inmates and 70% of female inmates in New Mexico are prescribed psychotropic drugs.

In exchange for pleading guilty to murder, a young soldier received a 45-year sentence with the possibility of parole. The plea resulted from evidence that Chantix, a smoking cessation drug manufactured by Pfizer, can increase hostility and agitation, according to the SunHerald. “Several experts provided some evidence that Chantix affected (the soldier’s) ability to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of his acts,” the SunHerald noted.