Informed Consent

In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

Prominent researchers conduct a review of antidepressant withdrawal incidence, duration, and severity. Results lead to call for new clinical guidelines.

Paper outlines recommendations for more thorough informed consent process in psychotherapy, which authors proclaim is an “ethical imperative."

“The federal privacy law known as HIPAA doesn’t cover home paternity tests, fitness trackers, or health apps. When a Florida woman complained after seeing...

“The National Women’s Health Network launched the 'Pass on the Pink Pill – Or Pass Out' campaign, to warn women of the marginal benefits...

From Undark Magazine: A new app, Psych Ward Reviews, gathers anonymous reviews of patients' experiences with inpatient treatment at public and private psychiatric and general...

From The Washington Post: In addition to the opioid crisis, America has one other prescription drug epidemic — older Americans are taking far too many unnecessary...

Researchers find that support and self-care were helpful for users during discontinuation, but that mental health professionals were not very helpful.

For MinnPost, Susan Perry discusses that the pharmaceutical industry played in the creation of the ‘mental disorder’ known as premenstrual dysphoric disorder or PMDD....

In this piece for the BMJ, Jeanne Lenzer profiles Vikas Saini, a cardiologist who is working to fight against excessive medical treatment. His work with...

Plaintiffs allege that Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka Pharmaceutical failed to warn doctors and patients about the risk for compulsive behaviors when taking the atypical...

“In a bid to raise awareness towards the global epidemic of abuse on Benzodiazepine or ‘benzos’ abuse, a global campaign dubbed as World Benzo Awareness...

In July of 2010, Stewart Dolin, a partner at the mega law firm Reed Smith, jumped in front of a subway train in Chicago, apparently suffering from akathisia caused by paroxetine. His widow sued, and the jury found GSK negligent in not informing doctors of the suicide risk

“Those who possess the data control the story.” In the wake of the reanalysis of the infamous Study 329, where scientific data claiming the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teens was egregiously manipulated, researchers are pushing for open access to raw data. “The issue here, scientists argue, is that without independent confirmation, it becomes too easy to manipulate data.”

An editorial in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society has called for a ban on advertisements about testosterone replacement therapy, and the FDA has issued warnings about the practice.

The International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry published an article titled Safety and utility of acute electroconvulsive therapy for agitation and aggression in dementia,  which concludes "Electroconvulsive therapy may be a safe treatment option to reduce symptoms of agitation and aggression in patients with dementia whose behaviors are refractory to medication management." But the participants were not a random selection of people taking the drugs in question. Rather, they were individuals selected because of aggressive behavior, most of whom had been taking some or all of these drugs on admission. So it is a distinct possibility that the aggression was a drug effect for many, or even most, of the study participants.

Primary care clinicians and mental health providers face a particular set of challenges when treating individuals with chronic pain. These problems are compounded by...

In this piece for Truthout, Noel Hunter lists seven facts it is important to be cognizant of during Mental Health Awareness Month, from the influence...

“Converging lines of evidence now suggest that depression—a common comorbidity in the setting of chronic pain—may in some patients represent an unrecognized yet potentially reversible harm of opioid therapy.”

In a bellwether case, plaintiffs allege that Pfizer did not adequately warn patients that Zoloft (sertraline) would cause birth defects. The case is scheduled in Federal Court in March, and the verdict will have significant implications for future suits.

One of psychiatry's most obvious vulnerabilities is the fact that various so-called antidepressant drugs induce homicidal and suicidal feelings and actions in some people, especially late adolescents and young adults. This fact is not in dispute, but psychiatry routinely downplays the risk, and insists that the benefits of these drugs outweigh any risks of actual violence that might exist.

Lack of “right care” causes physical, psychological and financial harm to patients

Writing for the Huffington Post, Caroline Beaton looks into how drugs continue to make billions in sales even after they lose lawsuits for fraud and misconduct. “The persistence of Big Pharma's fraud despite ubiquitous legal action suggests that our present efforts to hold the industry accountable are ineffective,” Beaton writes. “New polices in motion will make potentially unsafe drugs even easier to bring to market and promote.”

From Scientific American: The effectiveness of a particular medical treatment is often highly subjective and dependent on each individual's definition of the term "effective." Many...

Study details Medicaid-insured birth cohort’s exposure to psychiatric medications and mental health services.