Drug Page

This week an FDA advisory panel decided to remove warnings of serious psychiatric side effects from the Chantix product label. “In making its recommendation,...

“Adolescents whose mothers took certain antidepressants while pregnant with them are more than four times as likely to become depressed by age 15, compared with...

Recent meta-analyses of antidepressant clinical trials have revealed that up to 82% of the effects associated with the drugs may be attributed to placebo and non-medication factors. A new study examined the attitudes of psychiatrists toward these non-pharmacologic factors and found a large discrepancy between their beliefs and the empirical evidence.

A change.org petition out of the United Kingdom is addressing the extreme difficulty faced by people who attempt to taper off of antidepressants and...

The Scientific American reports on a new analysis of antidepressant trials revealing that the vast majority of meta-analyses have industry links and suppress negative results.

Pfizer is petitioning the FDA to remove the black box warning for Chantix which focuses on neuropsychiatric side-effects like suicidality and depression. The regulators...

The New York Post reprints an excerpt on antidepressants from the latest book by MIA contributor, Kelly Brogan, MD, “A Mind of Your Own:...

Nick Harrop, a campaign manager at YoungMinds, supporting young people’s mental health and wellbeing, said antidepressants for children should never be the only course of action....

The US FDA has launched a campaign to dispel the "myth" that women shouldn't be taking any medications while pregnant.

In part six of a seven-part “Drugging Our Kids” series by The Mercury News, Karen de Sa and Tracy Seipel unveil California’s top foster...

Foster children in Pennsylvania are being given psychotropic drugs by physicians at rates that are "disturbing" and "unacceptable," according to the state's Department of Human Services.

On September 18th the one day "More Harm than Good Conference" brought together many of the leaders of the critical psychiatry movement. While the event has passed, the video and slides from the conference have been made available on the council for evidence-based psychiatry website.

The Mercury News reports that California’s judicial council is taking major steps to address the rampant use of psychiatric drugs in foster care. The...

Writing for the Huffington Post, Caroline Beaton looks into how drugs continue to make billions in sales even after they lose lawsuits for fraud and misconduct. “The persistence of Big Pharma's fraud despite ubiquitous legal action suggests that our present efforts to hold the industry accountable are ineffective,” Beaton writes. “New polices in motion will make potentially unsafe drugs even easier to bring to market and promote.”

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."

Johnson & Johnson is exposed to personal injury and product liability lawsuits over the failure to warn about Risperdal gynecomastia side effects in boys.

"It's no secret that stimulant medications such as Adderall that are prescribed to treat symptoms of ADHD are sometimes used as 'study drugs' aimed...

Six men were hospitalized and one was pronounced brain dead after participating in a phase 1 clinical drug for a mood, anxiety, and motor dysfunction drug manufactured by Bial and administered by Biotrial. Carl Elliott, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, said investigators should look into questions like how much the men were paid and whether they properly consented to the trial. “Many Phase 1 trial volunteers are poor and unemployed, and they volunteer for trials like this because they are desperate for money,” he said. “This means they are easily exploited.”

BBC news conducts a video interview with a young man named George. He was prescribed antidepressants when he was 15, after only a five-minute...

Writing on his 1 Boring Old Man blog, Dr. Mickey Nardo reflects on the media frenzy around the RAISE study and asks why the prescription data has not been released. He adds skepticism about the political motives of the potentially overblown results, which he sees as a clear push for increased mental health funding.

The Washington Examiner reports that the manufacturer of the antipsychotic Abilify is seeking FDA approval for new digitized pills that would alert doctors if patients fail to take their drugs on schedule.

NPR reports on how ketamine is being used off-label to treat depression.

The antidepressant Paxil has been linked to birth defects. "An Ohio federal judge on Wednesday ruled that GlaxoSmithKline must face a product liability suit brought by a woman whose child was born with heart defects after she took the antidepressant Paxil during her pregnancy, ruling that she had successfully pled fraud."

Bloomberg reports that the FDA asked Pfizer in August “to modify safety warnings for its antidepressant Zoloft (sertraline) and acknowledge for the first time that some studies linked the mood-altering medication to heart defects in newborns.”

In a bellwether case, plaintiffs allege that Pfizer did not adequately warn patients that Zoloft (sertraline) would cause birth defects. The case is scheduled in Federal Court in March, and the verdict will have significant implications for future suits.