Legislation & Regulation

“The rising death rates for those young white adults, ages 25 to 34, make them the first generation since the Vietnam War years of the mid-1960s to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it,” the ‘Times reports.

From The New York Times: The recent trial of Wendy Dolin, whose husband died of suicide after starting the antidepressant paroxetine, demonstrates our need for more...

From Scientific American: Many autistic children are prescribed multiple psychiatric medications, which can lead to serious adverse effects and are often ineffective. "Multiple diagnoses lead to...

From VICE: In her recently published memoir, The Dead Inside, Cyndy Etler tells her story of being abused and subjected to attack therapy in a teen rehab...

Did the Treatment Advocacy Center actually uncover research proving that poor psychiatric medication adherence plays a "significant" role in whether people diagnosed with schizophrenia become violent? If such research does exist, is it as compelling as TAC described?

From BBC: A leading UK psychiatrist, Dr. David Healy, speaks out about the dangers of the growing prescription of antidepressants to young people under age...

Despite concerns about the risk to benefit ratio, the FDA approved flibanserin (Addyi) to treat low female sexual desire in August. In a new...

The latest from Martha Rosenberg: “Pharma companies love disease awareness advertising because, unlike direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, risks and warnings of possible drug treatments do...

From The New York Times: Overprescription is becoming an increasingly prevalent public health issue, especially for older adults with multiple chronic conditions. "Though studies have found...

Researchers experimenting on mice found that Lactobacillus—the probiotic commonly found in yogurt—may help reduce depressive symptoms in reaction to chronic stressors. But human studies have found mixed results.

Changing the mental health and psychosocial support system in Germany requires public debate about the ways our society should help and support people in mental crisis and with chronic mental health problems. We believe the driving force behind all help and support should be humanitarianism and respect for inalienable human rights.

Researchers suggest that the pharmaceutical industry had a vested interest in using the term “discontinuation” in order to hide the severity of physical dependence and withdrawal reactions many people experience from antidepressants.

Drugs to treat serious or life-threatening conditions can receive accelerated FDA approval, but may expose patients to increased safety risks and reduced efficacy.

A YouTube video called “Drugs for Kids” takes a rather tongue-in-cheek approach to the overmedication and overdiagnosis of kids. Studies reveal a correlation between how young...

Psychiatrist and psychologist outline pharmacological and psychotherapeutic strategies for discontinuing antidepressants.

From EndocrinologyAdvisor: A recent meta-analysis suggests that antidepressant drug use may increase patients' risk of diabetes. According to the lead investigator, over 1 million diabetes...

This piece from Newsner chronicles the life and work of Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, a journalist who went undercover to expose the conditions at an infamous mental...

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.

From Education Week: The Substance Use and Mental Health Services Administration has put a halt on the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, a...

From National Post: Antipsychotic drugs are increasingly being prescribed to children as young as two for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, aggression and behavior problems. A...

From The Irish News: Although the use of ECT has been steadily decreasing internationally, the use of ECT in Northern Ireland has significantly increased over...

From Vox Political: In a new proposal in the medical journal The Lancet, Kate Allsopp and Peter Kinderman have called for mental health professionals to record psychosocial...

Audit of ECT usage, demographics, and adherence to guidelines and legislation raises concern over its continued use.

A new study, published in the American Journal of Physiology, investigates how the use of antidepressants during pregnancy can lead to a life-threatening lung...

The first systematic investigation of the adverse effects associated with prescribing drugs “off-label” found that the common practice of using drugs for conditions for which they are not approved increases the risk of adverse effects.