Psychiatric Drugs

Being an ex-accountant I am always interested in figures (not to mention that prescribed benzodiazepine drug addiction has played such a major part in my life). According to a yearly booklet released by the Home Office in the UK, benzodiazepine drugs accounted for more deaths than ALL the so-called hard drugs put together.

From The Boston Globe: According to a new report from the Disability Law Center in Boston, two patients who died at Arbour Health System psychiatric...

From CounterPunch: Although people are often pathologized and shamed for feeling hopeless, hopelessness is sometimes a natural reaction to an oppressive political climate. George Carlin...

In this piece for Electric Lit, Anne Thériault shares how the book Girl, Interrupted helped her survive her 72-hour hold in a psychiatric ward following a suicide attempt. "The psychiatric...

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...

A website has been launched by the firm of Bernstein Liebhard LLP, who are filing cases on behalf of men and young boys who allegedly...

Members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Psychiatry Products division go on the defensive in a new article, responding to concerns about the agency’s approval of digital aripiprazole.

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $2.2 billion to settle probes by the U.S. government of its marketing of Risperdal and other medications,...

This is the first of a series of excerpts from Cracked Open, a book whose unintentional beginning came after I became addicted to Ativan in 2010. After a year of following my doctor’s orders for daily use to treat insomnia, my body began to fall apart. My story is much like the stories I’ve read on MIA.

New data shows that calls to US poison control centers have increased significantly for children taking stimulant ADHD drugs.

The researchers found that while antipsychotic drugs may be slightly more effective than alternative antidepressants, they come with a much higher side effect burden.

Researchers believe that side-effect monitoring is critical because of the increase in the use of antipsychotics

The most worrying thing about the Goff et al paper is the minimisation of the evidence that antipsychotics produce brain shrinkage. There are no studies that show progressive brain changes in people diagnosed with schizophrenia or psychosis in the absence of antipsychotic treatment.

Over the past two months, Ronald Pies and Allen Frances, in response to a post I had written, wrote several blogs that were meant to serve as an “evidence-based” defense of the long-term use of antipsychotics. As I read their pieces, I initially focused on that core argument they were presenting, but second time through, the aha moment arrived for me. Their blogs, when carefully parsed, make a compelling case that their profession, in their use of antipsychotics as a treatment for multiple psychotic disorders, has done great harm, and continues to do so today.

Results from a Cochrane meta-analysis find that the common practice of prescribing antidepressants to treat insomnia is not supported by current evidence.

Beginning with an "evolutionary analysis" and a review of serotonin's role in the body, researchers from Canada and the U.S. conduct a thorough review...

New research, based on data from almost a million children in Denmark, suggests that children of mothers who use antidepressants during pregnancy are more likely to be diagnosed with autism and psychiatric disorders.

A woman in Texas attempted suicide while in the active group of a clinical trial for smoking-cassation drugs Chantix and Zyban, both known to...

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports on legislation being passed in California to go after physicians who overprescribe psychiatric drugs to foster youth. The proposed legislation also targets government agencies that fail to offer nondrug alternative therapies to help foster youth recover from traumatic childhoods.

Consumer Reports affirms that, though the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat conditions not approved by the Food and Drug Administration has increased significantly in the...

Bipolar drug therapy is a balancing act of benefits vs. harms. Odds of attributable benefit cluster in a 15-25% band, so 75%-85% don’t see substantial benefit. Stated differently, if five people take a bipolar drug, only one is likely to see substantial improvement due to it, but all five will have side effects.

Results of a large government-funded study call into question current drug heavy approaches to treating people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study, which the New York Times called “by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States,” found that patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic drugs with individual talk therapy, family training, and support for employment and education had a greater reduction in symptoms as well as increases in quality of life, and participation in work and school than those receiving the current standard of care.

From The Times: In an age in which benzodiazepine dependence is increasingly becoming a global problem, online forums serve as a lifeline for numerous benzodiazepine...

Majority of top-selling and most promoted drugs in Canada are rated as having very limited safety and efficacy.

Robert Whitaker's comprehensive 2004 review of the record for antipsychotic outcomes. Go to Psychrights.org                        ...