Adult

-BPS Research Digest reports on growing efforts to understand the voices that virtually everyone hears in their heads.

Not an Onion Study: The first-ever injectable antipsychotic that lasts for three months was approved based on one clinical trial in which it prevented relapses better than putting people into sudden withdrawal.

Medicating children for a host of mental disorders has become very popular in some parts of the USA. More than 8 million kids from 6 months to 17 years of age are on pharmaceutical drugs in this wonderful country. We lead the world in drugging youth for behavioral, cognitive and attention issues. We are once again #1. But I would like to share with parents as well as adults working with children a few not so readily available facts related to medicating kids for behavior issues.

Depressed pregnant women need good care.  They should not be made to feel guilty for the choices they make concerning their depression or lectured to by those who don’t understand the area or lack compassion for them.  In that sense, Andrew Solomon does the public a service by turning his attention and writing talents to the topic of depression and pregnancy this week in the New York Times.  However, a crucial part of providing good care to depressed pregnant women is to give them accurate information on the topic.  In this sense, Andrew Solomon falls short.

-Buzzfeed looks at the history -- and present -- of how antipsychotic drugs became a common treatment for depression, despite their apparent lack of effectiveness.

Not an Onion Study: SSRI antidepressants did consistently outperform placebo in clinical trials, researchers discovered, so long as 16 of the 17 questions about patients' feelings are ignored.

"Depression can double risk of stroke," reported many news outlets, covering a study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers in the Journal of the American Heart Association

Researchers believe that they have gained a clearer understanding of how cocaine, amphetamines and related psychostimulant drugs "disrupt the normal functioning of the dopamine transporter in the brain."

-There seem to be no "causal" relationships between homelessness and substance abuse, argue three Australian researchers.

-In Schizophrenia Bulletin, an anonymous writer describes becoming convinced that his thoughts and actions were dangerously fused together.

Women diagnosed with bipolar or depression did not perform as well on tests measuring the ability to "sustain attention and respond quickly."

Many people "hear voices" of different kinds while reading -- what does this mean for research into auditory-verbal hallucinations?

-What does the balance of evidence say about the relationship between cannabis use and increased risk of psychotic reactions?

-James Coyne and others criticize a UK study for deliberately trying to be politically manipulative.

-Pharmaceutical companies and psychiatric researchers still "aren't telling you the whole truth" about treating anxiety.

-An Australian legal researcher discusses the different ways in which courts have handled cases involving war veterans.

-Time magazine looks at the effects of a number of relaxation techniques on depression and anxiety in elderly people.

Psychiatrists are giving drugs to most people with emotionally unstable personality disorders outside of the best-practice clinical guidelines, and an accompanying editorial stated that the reason is because "therapy takes time."

Why did I read Jeffrey A. Lieberman’s new book, “Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry”? Frankly, I have been befuddled by my profession. I am a psychiatrist — Board Certified, as they say, these past 37 years – for a long time. So finally, I thought, if I read this book, the pieces of the story would fall into place, right? Indeed, I was astonished!

-A commentary suggests that the evidence to support the use of cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis is tenuous, in part because CBT itself is so variable.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy worked as well -- and as poorly -- as antidepressants for preventing relapses in depressed people. Though the mindfulness participants may have been in acute withdrawal.

-Psychologist Laurence Palfreyman critically reviews a recent study that made global headlines, purporting to have found that depression made people three times as likely to commit violent crimes.

-Elisabeth Svanholmer explores the meaning and nature of "hearing, seeing and sensing things that others don’t."

-There's rising use of "cognitive enhancement" and energy-increasing psychiatric drugs among stressed workers and ambitious executives.

Researchers found some antipsychotics to be worse than others for causing sexual dysfunction.