When Placebos Beat Active Treatment
U.K. researchers find, in a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of medical (not only psychiatric) treatments that when bias is ruled out and effects...
Robert Whitaker & Allen Frances on Al Jazeera TV: “Redefining Mental Illness”
Robert Whitaker notes on Al Jazeera's "Inside Story" that a helpful diagnostic text must be both reliable and valid, and the DSM is neither...
“DSM-5: Caught between Mental Illness Stigma and Anti-Psychiatry Prejudice”
Jeffrey Lieberman, incoming president of the APA, responds to criticism of the DSM and psychiatry, saying "itâs important to understand the difference between thoughtful,...
Obesity in Men Diagnosed With ADHD as Children
A 33-year controlled, prospective study conducted as a collaboration by researchers in New York, Mexico, and Verona, Italy found that men diagnosed with ADHD...
Schizophrenia Subtypes Disappearing From the Literature
Schizophrenia Bulletin publishes a review of published articles that finds the use of schizophrenia subtypes (Catatonic, Disorganized, Paranoid, Residual & Undifferentiated), "while widely used...
Depression Screening Lacks Strong Evidence, Say Canadians
The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care has reversed its 2005 recommendations, finding methodological flaws, possible bias, and uncertain generalizability in a review...
A Critical Analysis of the Validity, Utility & Effects of the Biomedical Model
MIA reader/commenter Brett Deacon's article in the prominent Clinical Psychology Review says that despite "widespread faith in the potential of neuroscience", the biomedical era has...
The Economist Unwraps the DSM
The Economist, in its upcoming edition, says of the DSM "No other major branch of medicine has such a single text, with so much...
Rise in Suicides Baffles Military
The New York Times reports that the "baffling" rise in suicide rates in the U.S. military is not correlated to deployment, as is often...
A Review of Drug-Company Funded Mental Health Websites
A meta-analysis of studies of mental health websites by John Read found that 42% are either drug company owned or receive funding from drug...
J&J Fighting Federal Risperdal Deal Over Language Regarding Breasts
Johnson & Johnson is negotiating with federal authorities over language that might be used in dozens of civil lawsuits regarding abnormal breast development and...
SSRIs Increase Post-Surgical Complications
A study of 530,000 patients who underwent surgery at 375 U.S. hospitals found a 10% increased risk of post-operative complications including bleeding, transfusion, hospital...
Medicaid Fraud Argued Before 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
MIA blogger (and lawyer) Jim Gottstein presented a 20-minute Oral Argument in ex rel Watson v. King-Vassel in front of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago last Thursday. "The technical issue on appeal is a lawyer nerd question about whether expert testimony is required," said Gottstein, "but I like to think it contains a succinct and clear explanation of why even though a doctor can prescribe a drug for anything, if they prescribe one off-label to a child they are causing a False Claim (committing Medicaid Fraud) unless the use has support in at least one of the specified drug references called Compendia."
Grandmother Murders old Friend: Court Accepts SSRI as a Cause
Based on a psychiatrist's recommendation that the effects of citalopram (Celexa) had contributed to a 61 year-old grandmother's lethal bludgeoning of her friend of...
SSRIs Implicated in Drinking Problems
The U.K.'s Mail reports of an effect of SSRIs that, though rare, has shown up in significant numbers of people according to David Healy's...
Long-Term Benzos do not Help Schizophrenia
Researchers in Germany, China and Australia teamed up to find, through a meta-analysis of research pertaining to 1045 patients receiving antipsychotics, that augmentation with...
Stigma Associated With Labeling, Not Behavior
Research into stigmatizing attitudes towards behavior, published in Early Intervention in Psychiatry, finds that most study subjects did not spontaneously apply diagnostic labels to...
Mixed Outcomes Six Months After First Psychosis
French researchers looked at the outcomes of 467 "antipsychotic drug-naive" patients six months after a first psychotic episode (and treatment with medication), finding that...
Osteoporosis Associated with Antipsychotic Treatment
Chinese researchers find, in a literature review for the International Journal of Endocrinology find an increased rate of osteoporosis among people with a schizophrenia...
Autism Linked to Antidepressants During Pregancy
A study of the Swedish medical birth registry, conducted by researchers from Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.A., found a 3.3X greater risk of...
Community Treatment Orders Don’t Work
Legislation in the U.K. that empowers psychiatrists to impose treatment  on patients has lost the support of one of its key advocates. "The evidence is...
Pain Meds Reduce Dementia Symptoms
British researchers find that a 10% increase in pain medication resulted in a dramatic reduction in the use of antipsychotic and other medications. âWhen...
Bipartisan Agreement on Mental Health Treatment
The New York Times on Obama's $235 million initiative: "Mental health unites lawmakers Republican and Democrat, urban and rural, even those with safe seats...
Cymbalta Suicide Suit Settled
Eli Lilly & Co. will pay an undisclosed amount to settle the lawsuit of the parents of a South Dakota boy who committed suicide...
VA Still Using Benzos for PTSD Despite Warnings
Military.com reports that doctors from the Department of Veterans' Affairs are continuing to prescribe tranquilizers such as Valium and Xanax despite the VA's guidelines...
