Bipolar

When I was researching Anatomy of an Epidemic and sought to track the number of people receiving a disability payment between 1987 and 2007 due to “mental illness,” I was frustrated by the lack of diagnostic clarity in the data. The Social Security Administration would list, in its annual reports on the Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) programs, the number of people receiving payment for “mental disorders,” which in turn was broken down into just two subcategories: “retardation,” and “other mental disorders.” Unfortunately, the “other mental disorders,” which was the category for those with psychiatric disorders, was not broken down into its diagnostic parts.

These are not happy times for the embattled drug maker AstraZeneca.  The patent for Seroquel has expired; the company’s profits have plummeted; and its...

Confronting existential anxiety through “Basal Exposure Therapy” shows promising results in people withdrawing from psychotropic drugs.

Children who were exposed to anti-seizure drug valproate in utero were 48% more likely to develop ADHD, according to a new study.

A review of the literature from 2001 to 2011 on child abuse, neglect, and psychiatric disorders finds that early life stress subtypes can predict...

Researchers from the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre of King's College's Institute of Psychiatry in London, publishing in the Journal of Affective...

Everything was not okay, but how could I possibly explain? That I don’t belong here. That I am a phony, a fraud. That I am damaged beyond repair and unsuitable for this work. I felt it happening again: the pressure building in my chest and the tears burning my throat at the prospect of someone discovering my deepest, darkest secret. The precursor to my entire life falling apart.

In this piece for Beyond Meds, Chris Cole examines the intersection of racism and oppression against people labeled "mentally ill." "This is where social justice becomes...

A 2006 study in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics finds that 100% of schizophrenia and mood disorder experts and over 80% of other experts advising...

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...

Researchers find that valproate decreases brain volume in a region associated with emotion processing across all participants.

What if, in that moment, nothing happened? What if I was given a second to collect myself enough to engage in the conversation surrounding my future? No one asked me what I would like to do. I was never given the chance to regain my equilibrium before I was drugged and bagged for the next decade.

Research on a sample of 587 patients with DSM-IV defined bipolar disorder finds that an earlier age at onset of bipolar illness - along...

From Kaiser Health News: Peer support for people diagnosed with serious mental illness is becoming increasingly common. In places like Texas, where there is a...

Subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson have agreed to pay $5.9 million to settle Montana's lawsuit over the company's fraudulent marketing of Risperdal.  According to...

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

From Psychiatry Advisor: Childhood trauma modulates the effects of bipolar disorder on the amygdala and hippocampus; it is associated with increased volumes of gray matter. "'Childhood maltreatment has...

It is generally recognized in antipsychiatry circles that antidepressant drugs induce manic or hypomanic episodes in some of the individuals who take them. Psychiatry's usual response to this is to assert that the individual must have had an underlying latent bipolar disorder that has "emerged" in response to the improvement in mood. The problem with such a notion is that it is fundamentally unverifiable.

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

Sinead says she was misdiagnosed after giving birth eight years ago and has suffered greatly from the psychiatric drugs she was prescribed. “They are...

The FDA has approved Abilify MyCite, a pill with a sensor that digitally tracks whether patients have taken their medication. "The system works by sending...

Here we'll take a look at so-called 'mania.' We'll go through the criteria for a 'manic episode' symptom by symptom so you can see how the stress response is potentially operating. There's practically nothing that happens in human minds and bodies that the stress response doesn't potentially affect.

From Science Magazine: After studying over 1,100 individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder for 12 years, a University of Michigan research team has found that no...

"Always appending disorder to the word bipolar is akin to always appending accident to the end of automobile. In other words, saying 'bipolar disorder'...

Lifestyle interventions are the only corrective measures that are sufficiently complex to resolve the stress response factors that drive pathology. This case draws from twenty years of published scientific literature on psychoneuroimmunology and the connection between the gut, immune system, endocrine system, and the brain.