One-third of Youth Treated for Bipolar Developed Schizophrenia Symptoms
Over one-third of young people who were treated for bipolar disorder developed schizophrenia within eight years, according to a study in Schizophrenia Research. In...
Members of FDA Advisory Committee Offer Perspectives on Flibanserin Approval in JAMA
In the September issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) three FDA advisory committee members describe the convergence of factors that made the committeeâs recommendation to approve flibanserin especially challenging and politically charged.
Antidepressants Plus Immune Response Terminate Pregnancies in Mice
Also, male mice born to mothers with an immune response exhibited âautistic-likeâ behaviors, scientists report.
Hospital Stays for Juvenile Bipolar Jumped 434% from 1997 to 2010
A report from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project finds that hospital stays for a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children aged 5-9 increased...
Many Unforeseen Drug-drug Interactions Possible By Following Clinical Guidelines
If doctors follow UK government guidelines, they could endanger patients who have both depression and any of a number of other common diseases or conditions.
âThe Unfulfilled Promise of the Antidepressant Medicationsâ
A new article in The Medical Journal of Australia laments that, while antidepressant use continues to climb, the research evidence shows that their effectiveness...
Researchers Investigate Antidepressant-Induced Suicidal Ideation
An increase in suicidal thoughts is a known and serious side-effect for various types of antidepressants. Recent studies suggest that there may be some...
Reading the RIAT Act: A Call to Publish Unpublished Data
The Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials (RIAT) proposal, backed by the British Medical Journal and PLoS ONE last week, calls for the "responsible publication and...
Jury Awards $4M for Topamax Birth Defect
After an hour of deliberation, jurors decided that the anticonvulsant Topamax (topiramate) had, in fact, caused April Czimmer's son to be born with a...
Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews Finds Systematic Under-Reporting of Adverse Events
A systematic review by researchers from Canada, the U.K., and China finds that the 4,644 systematic reviews studied "compounded the poor reporting of harms...
Sleep Aid Melatonin May Not Be Safe for Children
Increasing numbers of children with sleep disorders are being treated with the hormone melatonin, but the medication has not been approved for such use.
Children’s Positive Responses to Antidepressants “Minimal” After Four Weeks
Children's positive responses to SSRI antidepressant treatments for depression are even less significant than adult responses, and do not last beyond four weeks.
Light Therapy Outperforms Prozac for Depression
In a new study, researchers found that bright light therapy was an effective treatment for nonseasonal major depressive disorder (MDD) while Prozac (Fluoxetine) alone...
Epidemiologists Decry Major Problems in US Psychiatric Practice
In an exchange published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, researchers take turns highlighting major problems in the way psychiatry is currently practiced in the United States. In response to an article by Vinay Prasad calling for an insistence on randomized control trials in âevidence-basedâ medicine, Jose de Leon, from the Mental Health Research Center at the University of Kentucky begins the back-and-forth by pointing out that this type of evidence has been detrimental to the field of mental health.
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...
FDA Applies Uneven Standards to New Drugs’ Safety and Efficacy
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that, although "many patients and physicians assume that the safety and effectiveness of...
Fort Hood Shooter was in Treatment, Taking Psychiatric Medication at Time of Shooting
Specialist Ivan Lopez, who is accused of killing three people and wounding 16 others at Ford Hood army base yesterday, had been examined by...
FDA-approved Ads Misinform Patients About Antipsychotics and Motor Dysfunction
Food and Drug Administration-approved information and public advertisements are misleading the public about the actual neurodegenerative risks from second-generation antipsychotics.
âAntipsychotic Use in Youth Without Psychosis: A Double-edged Swordâ
This monthâs issue of JAMA Psychiatry ran an editorial commenting on recent research revealing that the majority of youth prescribed antipsychotics have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder.
Measuring How Mental Health Professionals See Service Usersâ Rights
A new scale has been developed and validated to examine beliefs held by mental health professionals towards service usersâ rights.
More Research Links Autism to Pesticides
Autism and rates of other neurogically-related problems are higher in areas where large amounts of chemical pesticides are used, according to University of California...
Pharma Says Its Antidepressant Fails to Beat Placebo
Vanda Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced this week that its new antidepressant Tasimelteon failed to beat placebo in trials, and that it has hence ended its...
Boston Court Reinstates Neurontin Class-Action Lawsuit
Pfizer may face lawsuits regarding improper marketing of Neurontin after a Boston court reinstated lawsuits that had been denied class-action status by lower courts....
Paxil Boosts Estrogen, May Promote Breast Cancer Growth
A trial of a new process of identifying drugs that can disrupt sex hormones singled out Paxil from 446 common drugs as having a weak...
US Government Reviews Antidepressants During and After Pregnancy
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Servicesâ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a meta-analysis âEvidence Reportâ of the studies into...
