Antidepressants

What do you do when the media reports stories of children who have killed themselves on SSRIs? Position the stories of these children, not the drugs they were taking, as a suicide risk. Warn that more children will die if mouthy parents are allowed to speak and upstart journalists are allowed to report. And then position psychiatrists as the only people who can talk about suicide without producing an epidemic of self inflicted deaths.

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

The humor newspaper The Onion satirizes the conversion of transient human emotions into lifelong illnesses, reporting that "Shortly after losing grip of a helium-filled...

Clinical trials also consistently fail to measure and report long-term harmful effects.

“Adolescents whose mothers took certain antidepressants while pregnant with them are more than four times as likely to become depressed by age 15, compared with...

Time magazine reviews the evidence on exercise for depression, finding that exercise alters brain chemistry such that the brain shows less stress in response...

Several years after the information was first revealed, a published study has shown how an influential NIMH study doctored the real data about antidepressants and suicidal events in youth.

“The true balance of risk versus benefit for people taking these kinds of antidepressants will probably only emerge when independent researchers have access to...

Lawyers in St. Louis have filed a lawsuit against Pfizer that alleges 18 children were born with birth defects caused by the antidepressant Zoloft...

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy worked as well -- and as poorly -- as antidepressants for preventing relapses in depressed people. Though the mindfulness participants may have been in acute withdrawal.

New study finds that antidepressants may negatively impact recovery after psychiatric hospitalization.

The New York Times has released Retro Report's ten-minute documentary video and essay looking at the birth and rise to fame of the SSRI...

In this piece for The BMJ, Dr. Peter Gøtzsche points out several of the major problems with the drug-based paradigm of psychiatric care as well as...

A new study compares exercise, Internet-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (ICBT) and usual care for treating individuals with depression.

In this piece for The Atlantic, David Dobbs delves into the life of former NIMH director Thomas Insel, his critiques of research within the field of...

The antidepressant Paxil has been linked to birth defects. "An Ohio federal judge on Wednesday ruled that GlaxoSmithKline must face a product liability suit brought by a woman whose child was born with heart defects after she took the antidepressant Paxil during her pregnancy, ruling that she had successfully pled fraud."

The German pilot who apparently deliberately crashed a passenger plane reportedly had antidepressant drugs in his home, use of which is restricted or disallowed by many aviation regulators.

Representative Jeff Miller, Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, is looking into the role psychiatric medication may have played in the shootings...

In 2004, the American Psychiatric Association published a paper supporting the use of the antidepressant citalopram (Celexa) in children and teens. After reanalyzing the...

Prozac, Effexor, and/or carbamazepine induce gene expression patterns in the brains of fathead minnows that mimic those thought to be associated with autism in...

The October edition of the Journal of World Psychiatry, the 3rd ranked journal of Psychiatry, will publish a reanalysis of antidepressant efficacy versus placebo in major depression. When the researchers, Arif Khan and Walter Brown, analyzed the data from the FDA archives for antidepressants approved between 1985 and 1997, “it was evident that the conventional wisdom of 70% response with antidepressants was at best an overestimate.” In fact, “the magnitude of symptom reduction was about 40% with antidepressants,” compared to “about 30% with placebo.”

The body of 78 year-old Bob Farthing, who had been missing since Wednesday, was found in the back seat of his car Friday evening.  "He...

In a study of 793 women taking antidepressants and 639 not taking them, researchers in Turkey found that menstruation disorders were significantly associated with...

New research published in the July issue of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that the use of mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, antidepressants, and hypnotics during pregnancy is associated with increased health risks to the infant.

The May issue of Addiction includes a review of pharmacological and phenomenological issues around benzodiazepine (BZD) and SSRI discontinuation.  Definitions, perceptions and management of the...