Emotional Child Abuse Just as Harmful as Physical Abuse
Different types of child abuse have equivalent psychological effects, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry. It has previously been assumed that emotional and verbal abuse could have different or less harmful impact on a child’s psychology than physical or sexual abuse, but research now suggests that these forms of abuse can be just as damaging.
Training Health Workers in Therapy Leads to Improvements and Less Medication Use
A Nigerian study finds that more than three-quarters of patients improved, even when only 13% were prescribed medication.
Service-User Knowledge Helps Researchers Develop Psychiatric Drug Tapering Approaches
New strategies for tapering psychiatric drugs achieved by acknowledging withdrawal symptoms and valuing service-users’ first-hand knowledge.
Toward a Critical Self-Reflective Psychiatry: An Interview with Pat Bracken
MIA’s Justin Karter interviews critical psychiatrist and philosopher Pat Bracken about the necessity of challenging received wisdom.
Louisiana Court Rejects J&J’s Bid to Throw Out $258 million Risperdal Award
The state appeals court of Lake Charles, Louisiana found that "the trial court was not manifestly erroneous in casting (Johnson & Johnson owner) Janssen...
Woman “Jacked Up” on Zoloft Kills Baby
Saying that she had been "jacked up" on a new medication (Zoloft) and had not slept for five or six days, a Milwaukee man...
Long-Term Social Supports Needed After Onset of Psychosis
New data on the effects of social support after early onset of psychosis suggests that patients with intense social support function better than those without such help, but than once supports are removed the effects diminish.
Suicide Warning on Antidepressant Label is Justified, Researchers Say
Researchers confirm that the suicide warning for antidepressants is justified by the evidence and that claims that the warning is harmful lack support.
Breaking Blind: Antipsychotic Drug Efficacy May Be Overestimated
Only 4 of 188 antipsychotic trials assessed blinding, and in all 4 cases, the blind was broken, potentially leading to an overestimation of the drug effect.
Suicide Rates Did Not Decrease When Antidepressant Drugs Were Introduced
Researchers investigate the claim that the introduction of antidepressant drugs led to decreases in suicide rates internationally.
Psychiatrists Discuss Psychiatry’s Poor Public Image and What to Do About It
The January 2015 issue of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica has a section of freely available articles discussing the public image of psychiatry from a variety...
Canadian Newspaper Investigates Health Problems of ADHD Meds
The Toronto Star's investigation of ADHD meds has revealed 600 cases so far of Canadian children "suffering serious, sometimes fatal side effects suspected to...
Service Users Report Psychiatric Professionals as the Least Helpful Factor in Quitting Antipsychotics
A new study published in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice finds that psychiatrists and other doctors are the most unhelpful factor for...
Negative Antidepressant Trials Still Unlikely to Be Published
Antidepressant trials with negative results are still more likely than not to either be misleadingly spun as positive or unpublished.
Relapse in Antipsychotic Drug Trials is Poorly Defined
There is a lack of consensus in the definition of ‘relapse’ across randomized controlled trials of antipsychotic maintenance treatment for schizophrenia and psychosis.
Public Citizen Criticizes FDA’s Draft Guidelines on Drug Risk Disclosures
In the wake of a major court decision, the US Food and Drug Administration has issued new guidelines for public comment, covering how pharmaceutical...
Two Canadian Sources of Independent Health & Mental Health Research Shut Down
The Canadian Women's Health Network (CWHN), for two decades a major source of critical, independent research and information on women's health and mental health,...
A Brief History of Prozac
Prozac, having failed as an antihypertensive then anti-obesity drug, was marketed as an antidepressant after it lifted the spirits of five mildly depressed volunteers...
Benzodiazepines May Double the Risk of Pneumonia
An editorial in Thorax reviews the evidence for an association between mental illness, benzodiazepine use, and pneumonia. The authors find an equally augmented rate...
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...
Lilly Faces First Week of “Bellwether” Cymbalta Withdrawal Lawsuit
Calling it “Poison,” plaintiff Claudia Herrera testified she would not have taken Eli Lilly's drug Cymbalta had she known the risks. Lilly hid the risks of...
Lancet Editorial Points to “Trouble with Psychiatry Trials”
While clinical trials make up the “bedrock of evidence-based medicine” in other specialties, psychiatry faces a number of both ethical and scientific problems related to its use of randomized control trials. According to a new editorial in The Lancet Psychiatry, the field of psychiatry research has particular problems with ethical issues in recruitment, inaccurate classification systems, and controversial placebo comparisons, and then, once the studies are finished, it often remains unclear what the “outcomes actually mean for people’s lives.”
Smoking Cessation Drug Suspected in 30 Suicides in Canada
The Pfizer drug has also been linked to more than 1,300 incidents of suicide attempts or thoughts, depression, and aggression/anger across the country in the past seven years.
Antipsychotics for Childhood “Behavioral Problems” Skyrocket
Researchers from Columbia University and other New York institutions found a dramatically increasing use of antipsychotics to treat ADHD and other behavioral problems in...
Psychotherapy Can Prevent Relapse When Discontinuing Antidepressants
“Short and simple psychological programs can prevent people from relapsing when they stop their antidepressants.”
