Drug Page

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

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.

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.

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...

Writing for the Atlantic, David Dobbs examines how much harm has been done in the 14 years since Paxil was wrongly determined to be safe and effective. “Study 329, as it became known, helped spur a huge increase in Paxil prescriptions,” Dobbs writes. “In 2002 alone, over 2 million prescriptions were written for children and teens, and many more for adults.” “Thousands of children, teens, and young adults attempted or committed suicide while on Paxil,” and the reanalysis of Study 329 in BMJ makes it seem “more likely than ever” that many did because of the drug.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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."

In May 2014, the RIAT team asked GSK what the children who became suicidal in the course of Study 329 have since been told. The consent form says that anyone entering the study would be treated just the way they would be in normal clinical practice. In Study 329, the children taking imipramine were by design force titrated upwards to doses of the order of 300 mg, which is close to double the dose of imipramine given in adult trials by GSK or in normal clinical practice. In normal clinical practice it would be usual to inform somebody who had become suicidal on an SSRI that the treatment had caused their problem.

“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...

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...

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

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.”

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.

Miriam Stoppard writes an opinion piece on the lack of good research on Ritalin, a drug often used for ADHD, and discusses the latest Cochrane review which found a high percentage of side-effects in children. Despite the lack of quality evidence, “NHS figures show that nearly one million ADHD prescriptions were handed out last year in England – a number that has more than doubled in 10 years.”

James Davies, of the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry, issues his report from last week’s meeting in the UK Parliament concerning the connection between increased...

The odds of a child with Downs Syndrome being on a psychotropic medication increase steadily with age.

Wendy Dolin sued GSK after her husband committed suicide after taking a generic version of Paxil. The US District Court has declined GSK’s motions...

Writing for Forbes, Matthew Herper documents the FDA’s increasing drug approval rates. “In 2008, BioMedTracker says the FDA approved 20 new molecular entities (NMEs) and rejected 20, for an approval rate of 50%.” So far this year, he writes, “the FDA approval rate is more like 96%.”

"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...

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