Antidepressants

“A quick look at drugs or drug uses that later turned out to be risky shows a disturbing trail of ‘bought’ science in major medical...

In a scathing editorial in this month’s Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Dr. Giovanni Fava takes aim at prominent medical experts who have downplayed the role...

From Vox Gibraltar: Many people confuse psychology with psychiatry. Too often, general practitioners recommend psychiatric treatment when psychological treatment or therapy could be just as effective without resulting...

A first-of-its-kind hearing in Texas will determine how future court cases linking SSRIs with congenital malformation will be handled. Pfizer, the manufacturer of Zoloft,...

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.

-Peter Hitchens argues that the public discussion about the Germanwings crash has to start distinguishing between whether depressed people should be flying and whether people taking antidepressants should be.

With the current focus on the possible contribution of psychoactive drugs to the crash of GermanWings flight A320 on Tuesday, March 24, it is useful to identify potential links between the effect of the antidepressants and the events.  In all 47 cases listed on SSRIstories, the pilots were taking antidepressant medications, mostly SSRIs, often in combination with other medications and sometimes with alcohol.

A semistructured diagnostic clinical interview has been developed to identify and differentiate three different types of SSRI and SNRI withdrawal syndromes: new symptoms, rebound,...

The serotonin reuptake inhibiting (SSRI) group of drugs came on stream in the late 1980s, nearly two decades after first being mooted. The delay centred on finding an indication. They did not have hoped-for lucrative antihypertensive or antiobesity profiles. Even though a 1960s idea that serotonin concentrations might be lowered in depression had been rejected, drug companies marketed SSRIs for depression even though they were weaker than older tricyclic antidepressants. They sold the idea that depression was the deeper illness behind the superficial manifestations of anxiety. The approach was an astonishing success, central to which was the notion that SSRIs restored serotonin levels to normal, a notion that later transmuted into the idea that they remedied a chemical imbalance.

MedicalXpress and Science 2.0 interview MiA blogger Jeffrey Lacasse about his recent paper, "Prescribing of Psychiatric Medication to Bereaved Parents Following Perinatal/Neonatal Death: An Observational Study." Article →

Book by Joseph Glenmullen, a "Step-by-Step Guide to Safely Overcoming Antidepressant Withdrawal, Dependence and 'Addiction.'" Go to Amazon                ...

Last week, after the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) made a recommendation for increased mental health and depression screening “stories in the New York Times,...

Three recently published papers, along with a report by a Minnesota group on health outcomes in that state, provide new reason to mull over...

In Parts I-IV, I discuss how the DA succeeded in gaining the conviction by means of highly emotional and at times misleading and untruthful manipulations in public and in the courtroom. Here I want to look more closely at the DA’s motivation and other activities. Was it a personal vendetta?

A study published in this month’s issue of Stroke found that antidepressants may increase the risk of microbleeds in the brain. Both SSRI and SNRI antidepressants can disrupt natural clotting mechanisms and lead to increased adverse bleeding incidents and prolonged bleeding times.

Following an extensive systematic review of treatments for major depression, the American College of Physicians (ACP) issued a recommendation to clinicians suggesting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a first-line treatment for major depressive disorder along with second-generation antidepressants. The results of the review revealed that CBT and antidepressants have similar levels of effectiveness but that antidepressants present serious side-effects and higher relapse rates.

Brief psychodynamic and psychosocial interventions help maintain reduced depressive symptoms

A retrospective study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry examined cases of people who suffered sexual dysfunction that endured even after stopping taking SSRI antidepressants.

From Business Insider: Talkspace, a text message-based therapy platform, is bringing on a team of psychiatrists to prescribe medications to patients. The app is also...

People diagnosed with severe depression show the same changes in brain scans when they respond to a placebo as they do when they take an actual antidepressant, according to a new study. Researchers also found that those whose symptoms were decreased by a placebo were more likely to report relief from antidepressant drugs.

The Wall Street Journal highlights a new study that found that off-label medications represent about 12% of drug prescriptions and are resulting in negative...

A Molecular Psychiatry study found that people who had recurrent depression developed smaller hippocampi and antidepressants protected against that effect -- except insofar as the study evidence seemed to show the opposite of what the media reported on it.

A new study, published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, found that antidepressant efficacy was not dependent on severity.

Researchers from Australia find that chronic treatment with SSRIs significantly increases the rate of epileptogenesis in rats.  Although SSRIs are commonly prescribed to people...

From Newsroom: University of Auckland researchers make a case against the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness, arguing that biological explanations and treatments for emotional...