Depression

The International Business Times covers a new study showing “trials for new antidepressant medications may not be applicable to the population at large.” “The finding, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, shows recent trials are less generalizable than the prior studies, as researchers excluded most depressed patients from drug company-sponsored treatment studies.”

Healthline reports that as five second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) lose patent protection, Medicaid expenditures for antipsychotics are projected to be cut in half over the next five years. But some worry that the decrease in spending may lead policymakers to lift existing restrictions on antipsychotics at a time when most SGAs are prescribed to children for off-label reasons.

In this week’s NY Times Modern Love blog Hannah Louise Poston tells the story of living with her severely depressed boyfriend, Joe, and how her decision to buy a kitten improved their relationship. “The next morning when we woke up, the first words out of Joe’s mouth were, ‘Where’s the kitten?’ And the kitten’s first act, when she heard his voice, was to ice-pick her way up the quilt and jump on his face. That same summer, Joe mustered the energy to make major changes in his life…”

The majority of children, adolescents and young adults prescribed antipsychotic medications have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to a recent study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

A Molecular Psychiatry study found that people who had recurrent depression developed smaller hippocampi and antidepressants protected against that effect -- except insofar as the study evidence seemed to show the opposite of what the media reported on it.

-The most recent issue of the The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies examines the promises and risks associated with mainstream psychiatry's growing interest in ketamine for the treatment of depression.

Several years after the information was first revealed, a published study has shown how an influential NIMH study doctored the real data about antidepressants and suicidal events in youth.

-"Aboriginal youth are nine times more likely to be depressed and three times more likely to think about suicide compared to non-aboriginal youth."

Children's positive responses to SSRI antidepressant treatments for depression are even less significant than adult responses, and do not last beyond four weeks.

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

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

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.

Common scientific beliefs about serotonin levels in depression and how antidepressants act on the brain appear to be completely backwards.

For nearly two decades, Big Pharma commercials have falsely told Americans that mental illness is associated with a chemical brain imbalance, but buried SAMHSA survey results tell us that depression and suicidality are associated with poverty, unemployment, and mass incarceration. And these results also point us to the reality that American society has now become so especially oppressive for young people that an embarrassingly large number of American teenagers and young adults are depressed and suicidal.

Depressed elderly people are more likely to suffer heart disease not because of their depression, but apparently due to antidepressant drugs.

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.

In the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Yale University School of Medicine's Gerard Sanacora and Stanford University School of Medicine's Alan Schatzberg examine the scientific literature on ketamine, and discuss some of the promises and dangers surrounding the recent resurgence of interest in the drug as a potential treatment for depression.

The November/December issue of the Psychotherapy Networker is called "Depression Unmasked: Exposing a Hidden Epidemic." It includes articles such as, "Can Mood Science Save...

In the New York Times, Anna North discusses research looking into infectious causes of depression, and theories that depression may be an important evolutionary...

Does depression make us lethargic, or does lack of exercise make us depressed? The Mental Elf tries to answer this question, and reviews a...

PsyBlog reviews a recent study that found people who feel depressed are more effective and efficient than others at certain types of activities. "The researchers...

The November 13th issue of the journal Nature is titled "The Great Depression," and includes various feature stories and commentaries about research into depression,...

In the New England Journal of Medicine, Richard Friedman and Marc Stone present very different arguments about the reliability of the body of research...

The FDA released a report in July of a trial on children and adolescents of the selegiline (Emsam) transdermal patch for treatment of depression,...

Americans today, especially teens, are reporting having far more psychological problems that resemble "depressive symptoms" than they did in the 1980s, according to an...