Saturday, September 30, 2023

Previous Experiences with Treatments Influence Effectiveness of New Treatments

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Previous experiences of treatments working or not working significantly influence the effectiveness of new treatments on clinical trial participants and patients, even in relation...

Six Years of Re-education and Restrictions Sufficient to Change Inappropriate Prescribing Habits

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A six-year program run by the NHS Foundation Trust aimed at reducing high rates of inappropriate polypharmacy and overprescribing by physicians and psychiatrists to mental health patients in UK inner cities was successful.

New IRIS Guidelines for Early Intervention in Psychosis

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The 'Initiative to Reduce the Impact of Schizophrenia" (IRIS) has updated its 1998 guidelines for early intervention in psychosis to state that not all people...

Conflict of Interest Disclosure Far Less Likely in Psychiatric Journals

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A review of 285 review articles from 10 top psychiatric and 2 general medicine journals finds that reviews in psychiatric journals were far less...

Different Antipsychotics Have Different Effects on Brain Volume

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First generation antipsychotics seem to cause general brain volume loss, while second generation antipsychotics seem to both increase and decrease the thickness of different parts of the brain.

Eli Lilly Defeats “Bellwether” Cymbalta Withdrawal Lawsuit

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The Federal jury hearing the first of 5000 claims against Eli Lilly for hiding the risks of withdrawal symptoms associated with Cymbalta found that Lilly did not...

Military Study May Show Medication/Suicide Link

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A large-scale study of depression-related brain activity may also reveal whether a connection exists between the high rates of both psychotropic medication and suicide...

Medicaid Fraud Argued Before 7th Circuit Court of Appeals

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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."

British Psychiatrists Advocate Psychedelics for Depression

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The journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology has published a review of what is known about psychedelic drugs' biochemical effects in the human brain, their...

Antidepressants Often Prescribed to Enforce Heteronormativity, Study Concludes

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A new study investigating fifteen years of patient records at a Midwestern hospital found that psychiatrists almost always responded to patient complaints about their relationships by prescribing antidepressants, despite the fact that these complaints had little to do with the DSM criteria for depression. The study’s lead author, Jonathan Metzl, a professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt, suggests that after the decision in 1974 to remove homosexuality from the DSM, psychiatry continued to enforce socially accepted forms of relationships through the prescription of antidepressants.

State Of Mind Series Highlights Changes To Vermont Mental Health System

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Vermont Public Radio's series State of Mind will explore the ripples through Vermont's mental health system since Tropical Storm Irene washed away the State Hospital. In...

Stress Impacts Brain Development

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Research by a team at the University of California in Berkeley (including noted stress researcher Robert Sapolsky) published research in Molecular Psychiatry that finds chronic...

Psych Med Prescribing After Perinatal/Neonatal Death

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Research from MIA blogger Jeffrey Lacasse finds that "at present, there exists no rigorous evidence to support the prescription of Ads (antidepressants) in bereavement....

Tension Over Clinical Trial Data Disclosure Escalates

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Pharmalot reviews the escalating tension over clinical trial data disclosure. The PhRMA trade group has come out in opposition to AllTrials, a petition drive...

Antidepressants Do Work Well — We’ve Simply Been Evaluating Them Incorrectly

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Not an Onion Study: SSRI antidepressants did consistently outperform placebo in clinical trials, researchers discovered, so long as 16 of the 17 questions about patients' feelings are ignored.

Clinton Releases Mental Health Plan

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Today, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released their plan for addressing mental health care in the United States. The plan calls for a full integration of...

Most Clinical Trials Don’t Report Results

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An article in PLoS One, by researchers at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, finds that less than half (45%) of clinical...

Psychiatrization of Children Explored

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An entire special issue of the journal Children & Society is dedicated to examining questions surrounding “psychiatrised children.” Various studies explore how rarely children’s...

Common Alzheimer’s Drug Linked to Potentially Life-threatening Conditions

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A popular Alzheimer's and dementia drug has been linked to two potentially fatal conditions.

CT Continues to Block Access to Homicide Info After Sandy Hook

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Connecticut continues to block public access to information on homicide investigations, according to the Connecticut News Times, an effort that began with concerns over...

Many Physicians Don’t Understand Key Facts about Prescription Opioid Addictions

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A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health survey of 1000 US primary care physicians found that many do not understand basic medical facts about the addictive nature of the opioids they are prescribing.

Child Abuse/Psychosis Link Not Genetic

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Although psychosis is more common in the parents of people with psychosis than those without, the difference cannot be attributed to genetics, research from...

Educating Psychiatrists and Patients Does Not Reduce Polypharmacy or Obesity

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Teaching psychiatrists the appropriate prescribing guidelines for patients with schizophrenia did not reduce the incidence of inappropriate prescribing.

Beliefs About Psychosis Predict Engagement With Therapy, and Outcomes

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A study by U.K. researchers finds that patients with schizophrenia diagnoses are more likely to engage in therapy and to experience positive outcomes when...

Psychotic Experiences Are Not Strongly Associated With Schizophrenia

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Although psychotic experiences (PEs) and schizophrenia are thought to share similar etiological risk factors, PEs also co-exist with depression and, according to research from...