Bipolar

Increased Parkinson's risk could be related to lithium, antipsychotic, and antiepileptic drug use.

Between 2,150 and 4,100 children suffered from severe malformations connected to valproate prescription.

How people are treated after being hospitalized can either help them to overcome the traumatic effects of coercion or make them worse.

A new analysis of UK mental health data suggests the way organizations deliver mental health services can alter patient outcomes.

5.7 million Americans say they have "Bipolar Disorder." These patients have been labeled, categorized, and offered an understanding of themselves as diseased, sick, and permanently broken. It is considered one of the more severe "mental illnesses," perhaps because it presents almost as an amalgamation of psychosis and depression in a particularly volatile form. In my training, I was taught to medicate these patients, often with multiple medications, and often against their will. Poetically, though, these patients — desperate to understand who they are in a system that condemns them to a life of struggle and suffering — will be vindicated by modern science.

In an article for Psychiatric Services, psychiatrist Christopher Gordon and his colleagues report on the results of a one-year feasibility study attempting to implement...

A large review and meta-analysis of 167 studies across 60 years dissects placebo-controlled randomized controlled trials of antipsychotic drugs.

Researchers at the UCs Berkley and San Francisco, and the University of Miami, suggest in a paper in Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy that bipolar...

Mortality rates in schizophrenia and bipolar patients in the year after hospitalization were about double the national average and rising, according to this study...

Despite the integral importance of blinding and blinding assessment to randomized controlled trials (RCTs), they are rarely reported on or documented in trial reports...

In this piece for Elephant Journal, one man tells his story of being locked up and forcibly drugged in the psych ward, and how he...

From The Washington Post: Despite major lawsuits and detailed reports pertaining to severe health risks associated with the antipsychotic Seroquel, the drug remains one of...

Noting a "striking incongruity between the wide use of and the weak evidence base for the efficacy and safety of antidepressant drugs in bipolar,"...

Neuroleptic Drugs and Violence by Catherine Clarke SRN, SCM, MSSCH, MBChA. and Jan Evans MCSP. Grad Dip Phys.

Bipolar drug therapy is a balancing act of benefits vs. harms. Odds of attributable benefit cluster in a 15-25% band, so 75%-85% don’t see substantial benefit. Stated differently, if five people take a bipolar drug, only one is likely to see substantial improvement due to it, but all five will have side effects.

Patients are at an increased risk for suicide during the three months immediately following discharge from an inpatient psychiatric hospital.

In this special report for the Journal Sentinel, Meg Kissinger tells the story of Amanda Farrell, a woman labeled severely mentally ill who eventually recovered...

Harvard researchers investigated 6,214 cases of major depression for factors that would predict transition to bipolar disorder.  Clinical characteristics such as age of onset...

With deep regret, Mad in America announces another loss in our contributor community. Julie C. Greene, writer and antipsychiatry advocate, lost her battle with kidney disease on November 29 at her home in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Julie had been an MIA blogger since 2014, including several pieces on the dangers of lithium.

There are some things to applaud about the recently released update of the NICE bipolar guidelines, not least the recognition that the diagnosis has been inappropriately applied to children with behavioural problems. Hopefully this will help curtail the worrying trend of using toxic bipolar drugs in this age group. As usual, however, the Guidelines overlook glaring problems with the evidence base for drug treatment in general, and miss an opportunity to stem the diagnostic creep that has come to the UK and Europe via the United States.

The narratives about Bipolar Disorder promoted by drug companies may influence how those diagnosed understand themselves.

Report from June of 2000 by the British Psychological Society Recent Advances In Understanding Mental Illness and Psychotic Experiences              ...

Researchers in Denmark found, in a study of 49 remitted bipolar patients published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, that beliefs...

In today’s Boston Globe (April 14), Dr. Dennis Rosen, a pediatric lung and sleep specialist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, reviews my new book,...

From The New York Times: In a new book, Blue Dreams, psychologist and patient Lauren Slater critiques the drug-based model of psychiatric care, debunking the chemical...