Antidepressants

A scientific review says we need to know much more about the risks of nursing mothers taking SSRIs.

Depressed elderly people are more likely to suffer heart disease not because of their depression, but apparently due to antidepressant drugs.

The French non-profit organization Prescrire has produced a special report about the impacts of SSRI antidepressants on male fertility.

What if I told you that, in 6 decades of research, the serotonin (or norepinephrine, or dopamine) theory of depression and anxiety - the claim that “Depression is a serious medical condition that may be due to a chemical imbalance, and Zoloft works to correct this imbalance” - has not achieved scientific credibility? You’d want some supporting arguments for this shocking claim. So, here you go:

Scientists from the University of Utah say they have discovered a new way of doing mice experiments that more sensitively and quickly reveals negative...

The Finnish Psychological Association held a meeting in Helsinki on 1 Sept 2014 titled “Mental Health and Medicalization.” I spoke at the meeting and four days later I sent a letter to another speaker, psychiatrist Erkki Isometsä. Professor Isometsä replied: “I will respond to it in detail within a few days..." As "Open Dialogue" is essential in science, I have published my letter to Isometsä here as well as on my own website, although I didn’t succeed in starting a dialogue.

The article “Special K, a Hallucinogen, Raises Hopes and Concerns as a Treatment for Depression,” by Andrew Pollack in the New York Times, December 9, 2014, tells how far afield my field, psychiatry, has really gone - that it is even a consideration to use an hallucinogen for the treatment of depression.

Depression during pregnancy is an important issue. Depression should not be ignored and depressed pregnant women deserve good treatment and care. Part of that good care, though, is providing them with full and correct information. I care for pregnant women taking antidepressants on a daily basis and too often they tell me that the only counseling they received about the medication was, “my doctor told me it’s safe in pregnancy.” This post will review the evidence in this area and address the counterarguments.

Patient Drug News advises avoiding use of the antidepressant Vortioxetine (also called Brintellix or Trintellix), because the most recent evidence from the FDA shows...

In a review of the scientific evidence about sexual dysfunction caused by antidepressants, Australian researchers determined that some of the medications are worse than...

Two South African researchers review scientific understanding of the brain changes that lead to antidepressant discontinuation syndrome (ADS) in Human Psycho-pharmacology: Clinical and Experimental....

A short article in Scientific American Mind reviews the rapidly expanding array of diverse ailments and conditions for which antidepressant drugs are being prescribed. "As...

Robin Williams had "therapeutic" levels of the tetra-cyclic antidepressant mirtazapine in his blood at the time of his suicide, according to the coroner's report...

In the New England Journal of Medicine, Richard Friedman and Marc Stone present very different arguments about the reliability of the body of research...

Ever higher levels of pharmaceutical drugs are turning up in drinking water supplies, and an op-ed in the UK Mirror discusses a study that...

The FDA released a report in July of a trial on children and adolescents of the selegiline (Emsam) transdermal patch for treatment of depression,...

It is very common for psychiatric patients, especially those diagnosed with schizophrenia, to be prescribed two or more psychiatric medications at once, and this...

One-on-one Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is better than psychiatric medications or other common psychotherapeutic interventions for severe anxiety disorders in adults, according to a large...

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...

The popular smoking cessation drug Chantix is the medication that most frequently makes people feel suicidal or homicidal, according to figures gathered by the...

People who take SSRI antidepressants are twice as likely to have their dental implants fail, according to McGill University researchers. In a press release,...

Mice genetically developed to lack the ability to produce serotonin in their brains did not display any depression-like symptoms or behaviors, according to a...

Upon reviewing all of GlaxoSmithKline's data from both published and unpublished trials of the antidepressant paroxetine, researchers found the drug provided almost no benefits...

The number of people seeking psychiatric treatment in Turkey rose from 3 million people in 2009 to almost 9.2 million in 2013, according to...

This month, the seventh study and eighth study came out on the topic of antidepressant exposure during pregnancy and autism.  And these studies showed, as essentially all of the others have, that antidepressant use during pregnancy (principally with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) is associated with autism in the exposed children. With so many children being diagnosed with autism and so many women taking antidepressants during pregnancy, everyone wants to know: are these things (the antidepressants) associated with autism or not?  Quite frankly no one has the time to read through all eight scientific papers (and dozens more animal and basic science studies) to understand this important area, so I will do my best to briefly summarize it here.