A New Silver Bullet? The Lurasidone Story
Recently, I have been the target of much wooing by my local Sunovion rep. I think he leaves messages for me almost weekly and he sends me missives - glossy brochures and reprints from major psychiatric journal. What is the subject of this attention? The drug - lurasidone (Latuda).
No Matter Which Measure You Use, Antidepressants Aren’t That Effective
Researchers compared the efficacy of antidepressants using different rating scales and found them to be no different—just slightly better than placebo, and not meeting the criteria for clinical significance.
Rigorous Study Finds Antidepressants Worsen Long-Term Outcomes
A new study conducted by Jeffrey Vittengl at Truman University has found that taking antidepressant medications resulted in more severe depression symptoms after nine years.
New Review Highlights Dangers of Electroconvulsive Therapy
Data shows that over a third of users experience permanent memory loss and that approximately half report not receiving adequate information about the risks from their doctors.
Experiences of Depression Connected to Declining Sense of Purpose
In-depth interviews find that those who screened positive for depression did not explain their experience in terms of diagnostic symptoms.
Percentage of Americans on Antidepressants Nearly Doubles
From 1999 to 2012 the percentage of Americans on antidepressants increased from 6.8% to 13%, according to a report published this week by the...
More to Happiness Than Feeling Good, Study Finds
Cross-cultural data suggest that happiness involves feeling the emotions one deems as right, in accordance with personal and cultural values.
Smartphone Based Interventions for Depressive Symptoms
New meta-analysis of smartphone based interventions demonstrates small-to-moderate effect.
Researchers: Antidepressant Withdrawal, Not “Discontinuation Syndrome”
Researchers suggest that the pharmaceutical industry had a vested interest in using the term “discontinuation” in order to hide the severity of physical dependence and withdrawal reactions many people experience from antidepressants.
Challenging the New Hype About Antidepressants
The extraordinary media hype over the latest meta-analysis of antidepressants puts the discussion of these drugs back years. Despite the fact that rates of prescribing have doubled over the last decade, the authors of the analysis are calling for yet more prescribing. But this latest meta-analysis simply repeats the errors of previous analyses.
In Honor of Fear and Pain
Our use of antidepressants has turned single-episode struggles that recovered 85% of the time within one year, never to recur, into chronic and debilitating disorders that hold patients hostage in their own arrested development. But, If you are in the hole of pain, here’s what I have to say to you. It’s what I say to my patients, and what I tell myself in times of struggle.
Antidepressant Effects Thwarted by Stressful Environments
A new study, about to be published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, investigates the role a stressful environment plays in antidepressant effectiveness....
Now Antidepressant-Induced Chronic Depression Has a Name: Tardive Dysphoria
Three recently published papers, along with a report by a Minnesota group on health outcomes in that state, provide new reason to mull over...
Fact Checking the New Yorker, Part Two
In his March 1 article in the New Yorker, Louis Menand wrote that the NIMH's STAR*D trial showed that antidepressants produced a 67% recovery...
Ambushed by Antidepressants for 30 Years
They helped me function for a while, but the debilitating side effects of antidepressants held me prisoner. I'm still having a hard time understanding how this could have happened. It's been suggested to me by a therapist that what I'm going through now is another kind of PTSD: the ongoing trauma of realizing what antidepressants did to me for 30 years.
Increased Antidepressant Use Does Not Decrease Depression Prevalence in Older Adults
The use of antidepressants has risen quickly among older adults but the rate of depressive symptoms in this population has not declined as a result.
Rising Rates of Suicide: When Do We Acknowledge That Something Isn’t Working?!
Scapegoating a purported unseen "illness" may provide temporary comfort from acknowledging the horrors and injustice of the world, but it is a delusion — and one with fatal consequences for many. When 45,000 people a year would rather die than live in this world any longer, it might behoove us all to consider what is happening in the world to cause this.
Violence Caused by Antidepressants: An Update after Munich
The media is now reporting details about the 18-year-old who shot and killed nine and wounded many others before killing himself on July 22 in Munich. My clinical and forensic experience leads to a distinction among people who murder under the influence of psychiatric drugs. Those who kill only one or two people, or close family members, often have little or no history of mental disturbance and violent tendencies. The drug itself seems like the sole cause of the violent outburst. On the other hand, most of those who commit mass violence while taking psychiatric drugs often have a long history of mental disturbance and sometimes violence. For these people, the mental health system seems to have provoked increasing violence without recognizing the danger.
Scientists Clarify Risks of Augmenting with Antipsychotic Medications for Depression
The researchers found that while antipsychotic drugs may be slightly more effective than alternative antidepressants, they come with a much higher side effect burden.
Does DSM-5 Matter? Yes; but not for Psychiatrists
What makes the DSM so pernicious is that it is a cultural document whose influence transcends not only psychiatric practice but also the Western civilization from which it originates. Each revision of the DSM rescripts and reimagines how we make sense of our experiences, reinterprets what thoughts, feelings and behaviors are socially sanctioned, and ultimately what it means to be human.
Benzodiazepines Linked to Treatment Resistant Depression
Prior use of benzodiazepines, such as Xanax, Librium, or Ativan, may increase the risk of treatment-resistant depression (TRD), according to a new study published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
Tapering Strips Help People Discontinue Antidepressants
A new study by Peter Groot and Jim van Os has found that tapering strips help people successfully discontinue antidepressant medications.
Still Seeking a Chemical Cure After All These Years: Lauren Slater’s Blue Dreams
Blue Dreams offers a history of the development of psychiatric drugs, but is partly a memoir of the demise of the author's health during the decades she spent on psychiatric drugs. At the time of writing her memoir, Slater is not yet at the point of realizing that the mental health system is not a productive place to go for answers to depression.
Researchers Challenge Industry-Friendly Depression Guideline
Review of a new mixed depression guideline reveals financial bias of guideline developers and lack of evidence supporting recommendations for prescribing of antipsychotics.
Better Mental Health Care Needed for Pilots
A new study shows that airline pilots are at elevated risk for depression, yet encounter barriers to accessing mental health services.